The Room (2003) Review

 

The Room (2003)

The Room follows Johnny, who finds out the hard way that his fiancé is cheating on him with his best friend Mark, sending a seemingly happy and successful man to rock bottom.

Widely considered the (best) worst movie of all time (but surpassed in recent years in my opinion), The Room really seems to gun for that title from the start. It’s horribly paced, the acting is awful, the relationship dynamics are all over the place, plus 30% of the film is practically soft-core porn there’s so many sex scenes. To say that first time writer, director, producer, and actor Tommy Wiseau was ambitious, is an understatement. It has such a weird vibe where each scene felt like it was pulled from a separate movie script and thrown in there, making the movie feel disjointed, on top of all of the other weird happenings that occur (aka failed drug deals, awkward birthday parties, and even a scene where to friends break into Johnny’s house to hook up).

Despite being an amateur film, the budget is abnormally high—approximately 6 million, which is so interesting considering the silly production quality that is full of an absorbent amount of stock footage and bad green screen work. All that said, the movie is actually hilarious, though unintentional. It’s overly dramatic attitude and lack of any chemistry result in an awkward mess that is either really funny or flat out uncomfortable.

The cast includes a mostly no name actors, including Carolyn Minnott, Robyn Paris, Philip Haldiman, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero, and Tommy Wiseau. It’s really bad when the best actor here is the drug dealer (who shows up for 2 minutes). Wiseau is hilariously the worst and the mix of his weird accent, dramatic attempt at acting, and skin-graph looking, overly ripped body, make him such a unintentionally funny centerpiece.

The Room, directed by Tommy Wiseau, is a masterclass in awful filmmaking, acting as a how-to manual about what not to do, fully earning its cult status as one of the unintentionally worst films to ever grace the silver screen.

3.7/10