by Brandon Matzke

(edited version for TV audience)

It’s October. Well, it’s time to talk about something scary: a ridiculously bad movie. Not just any bad movie, one of the worst movies ever made. And seeing as the day I wrote this it was Tommy Wiseau’s (the director/actor/writer/producer) birthday, and a film is coming out next month about the making of this movie, I thought it was time to cover this mess. So, let’s dive into this monstrosity of a film!

Plot: Since this film is nearly impossible to comprehend, I’ll summarize what I understood about this it: a space alien disguised as a human named Johnny falls in love with a girl named Lisa, who is his “future wife.” But later in the film Lisa starts to cheat on him with his best friend Mark (as in, “oh. Hi, Mark”). This drives Johnny to the brink of insanity (“Lisa, you’re tearing me apart!!!”), which drives Johnny into a deep depression (I guess).

Positives: This movie is hilarious, but for all the wrong reasons. This was intended to be a serious drama about relationships and what they can do to people, but instead it ended up as one of the best comedies of all time. Tommy Wiseau is hysterically bad in this movie, whether he’s simply ordering flowers under a 30-second timer or destroying his house in both the most uncaring yet over-the-top performance I have ever seen. This man can’t even impersonate a chicken correctly, and it’s all for the better. The dialogue he writes is so offbeat that it’s become a pop culture icon, including the infamous lines I referenced earlier.

Negatives: Technically, everything about this movie is a negative. But some stand out more than others. For every hilarious line coming out of Tommy Wiseau’s mouth, there’s four more boring lines coming from his “future wife” Lisa. She has conversations with her mother that go nowhere, and almost every scene in the second third of the film has literally no effect on the plot. Also, let’s talk about Danny. Danny is a teenage boy that Johnny and Lisa adopted who comes off scarier than Hannibal Lecter at times. I don’t think that was the intent, but it certainly makes him one of the weirder parts of this already weird movie.

Overall: The Room is one of the worst movies ever made. It’s unfocused, poorly made, and the best example of filmmaking gone wrong. I’m not going to lie and say that I can do better, but what I will say is that I’ve seen three minute shorts better than this two hour film. However, this is an absolutely hysterical movie, and one to watch with friends for the intent to have a good time watching an awful movie. The Room gets an 11/10: it’s that bad. So, what film should I cover next? Let me know in the comments, and before I leave, here’s what others had to say about this mess.

Critic’s reviews:

Rotten Tomatoes: 32% (rotten)
IMDb: 3.6/10