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August 27, 2009from his blog http://faithlessphil.livejournal.com/
So it’s Cult Cinema Week at Mogwai, and we’re showing a bunch of films that have found new life in the grand tradition of the midnight screening. We’re showing midnight screening classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Big Lebowski. And those are great films that deserve their cult status.
But neither one of them can hold a candle to The Room. Over the last five years, The Room has become a cultural phenomenon, a film endorsed by the likes of Paul Rudd, David Cross, Will Arnett, Kristen Bell and Jonah Hill.
First things first: The Room is a terrible movie. But it is fascinatingly terrible. Writer/Director Tommy Wiseau has about zero filmmaking skill, no sense for pacing or storytelling. He has no grasp of characters or of dialogue. He’s also a terrible actor, which is a problem since he’s also the star of picture. Wiseau can barely speak English, his accent so strange and think that he makes Schwarzenegger sound like Laurence Olivier in comparison.
And so yes, the film is crap. But all that crappiness is strangely appealing. Observe:
I definitely have breast cancer
Hi doggy. You’re my favorite customer
You are tearing me apart, Lisa!
But it’s too easy to harp on the “so bad it’s good” cliché in explaining the appeal of this film. The real strength of this film is the sincerity with which Wiseau lays out his ideas. His ideas are terrible and downright misogynist, but he lays them out with a strange earnestness that just wins you over. You get the sense that at some point in Wiseau’s life, he was really betrayed by a woman, and that his only recourse was to spend six million dollars on a terrible vanity film.
Wiseau is at the heart of this picture, a man seemingly who might as well be from another planet trying to understand some of the twistier portions of the human condition. It’s all horrible and strangely compelling stuff, and none of my words can do justice to how downright funny this movie ends up being.
So if you’re free on Saturday, The Room is showing 10 PM at Mogwai Cinematheque. Go check it out.
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Philbert Ortiz Dy is the resident film critic of Clickthecity.com.
