This is more of a retro review as the movie was released in 2003 and it is a review only in the academic sense. There will be a score and I will discuss its attributes but in this case the score doesn’t reflect whether or not you should see it. The reason for this is quite simple. The Room is absolutely the worst movie ever made. That sounds like a pretty bold statement and I am sure arguments can be made for worse films but for earnest efforts in which the film maker was dead serious, there are very few films that can even be mentioned in the same sentence. That being said, it is an experience that should not be missed for anyone who can appreciate trainwrecks and can enjoy a film for how painful it is.

My ex-girlfriend turned me on to the film about two and a half years ago and in that time I have tried watching it four times, one of which included the hilarious Rifftrax. I couldn’t make it through. I recently caught a screening at the Loft Cinemas in Tucson, AZ and finally saw the whole film. I was armed with a friend and having paid for a ticket and an audience who were very vocal. The showing wasn’t exactly like Rocky Horror Picture Show but there was plenty of lines called, spoon throwing and catch phrase moments. It was a fun time even if the movie is still physically painful to endure.

The Room is the love child of Tommy Wiseau who wrote, produced, directed and starred in the film. It apparently had a budget of six million dollars but none of that appears on the screen unless Wiseau had to pay half a million every time he used a slow tracking shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The lack of talent Wiseau displays on every level is truly staggering to the point where you would almost swear the man is a genius. He works in self delusion the way other masters work in oil and his unwavering belief that he is doing and has done great work is awe inspiring and I respect him for no other reason than he has the sort of self-esteem that could make me the sort of person who could be capable of sustaining a meaningful relationship (although finding my IMDB page has given me a bit of an ego boost).

The writing is, of course, terrible. To call the dialogue simplistic and stilted would be like suggesting that the Beatles were a moderate success. No one in the history of the world has ever had conversations like this. The don’t flow naturally at all and often don’t really follow any logical point from line to line. One minute a character reveals she has breast cancer and the next minute her daughter is talking about breaking up with her fiance and needing to be alone. Sure, the character is a self-centered whore and all but one would think a little more time would be spent on the reveal of a terminal illness.

The dialogue is one thing but the story itself meanders like a schizophrenic with a head wound wandering around in the middle of snow storm. The amusing thing about that is that the story is kind of straight forward. Johnny (Wiseau) is a semi-successful banker who is a devoted friend to the people who live in his building including Mark (Greg Sestero) his best friend, Denny (Philip Haldiman) a presumably borderline mentally challenged youth who Johnny taken under his wing, and fiance Lisa (Juliette Danielle) who is a conniving whore. Johnny does all the right things, he goes to work, pays the bills, comes home with flowers, doesn’t drink, makes love to his wife in a drawn out montage so bad that he has to use the footage a second time recut and masquerading as a new scene, has pictures of spoons and is up for a promotion. Lisa is, for no apparent reason, unhappy and looking for some strange. When I say strange I don’t mean unfamiliar dick as much as I mean she chooses to take said member on the apartment’s spiral stair case. I am all for having sex in interesting places but a spiral staircase in the apartment? It is as if she was trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible, which is fitting because that mirrors exactly what the audience experiences while forced to watch. The partner she chooses is Johnny’s best friend Mark who is reluctant to betray his friend for about 30 seconds or so and then he is drilling her belly button halfway up the stair case.

And that is more or less the plot. Johnny tries his best, Lisa hates him and Mark continues having sex with her. Occasionally Denny shows up to borrow sugar or to ask Johnny something only to leave immediately, but mostly we are treated to drawn out scenes of nonsense that would be boring if they weren’t so goddamn awful.  At one point Denny is almost killed by Chris-R who is apparently a drug dealer to whom Denny owes money but Mark and Johnny show up at the right time and send him on his way…because that is all drug dealers need to go away is to be escorted out of the building.

This happens repeatedly throughout the movie as characters come and go with no explanation and are only unified in their universal love for Johnny. They aren’t really introduced and they have no real character of their own, they are only there to talk about how Johnny is great and does everything right and to tell Lisa to stop being such a slut and just marry him already. At one point an actor is swapped out with another and there is no explanation why or even that it is the same character. You could assume that at some point the psychologist friend gets into an accident that leaves him in need of massive face reconstruction but you would have to be let in on the fact that it is the same character in the first place.  There is also more unmotivated football playing than any film I have ever seen.

In addition to this, story points are introduced through out the movie without any set up or support. They just sort of happen and you get the sense that there were scenes written that connected it all together but either those scenes weren’t shot or they were cut for time. I find that hard to believe given all the establishing shots of the Golden Gate Bridge but who knows at this point. Details about the story change without notice as well. In the beginning of the movie Johnny and Lisa have been together for five years but by the end they have been together for seven years. You might be tempted to assume that two years have passed throughout the course of the film but given that Johnny and Lisa are set to be married ‘next month’ for the length of the film this is impossible. I wonder if Wiseau was the script supervisor as well.

I mentioned the sex scenes briefly but they really deserve their own attention. The Room is a great movie to watch right after being dumped because the scenes are so godawful they will put you off sex for a number of months proportional to how quickly you can close your eyes or excuse yourself to the bathroom when they begin. As it is, I can’t even have ‘alone time’ without seeing Wiseau’s undulating left butt cheek. Most movies are  content with one or two sex scenes but the Room offers up three in the first 20 minutes. There is so much soft core sex in this movie that the only thing keeping you from mistaking it for a late night movie on Cinemax is that those have better acting, editing and production values. It isn’t just that Wiseau’s naked body looks not unlike someone took a four day dead pig skin and filled it with an assortment of fruits, vegetables and honey baked hams and then stretched it over a clothing rack, but it is also the configuration of the bodies while they are having sex. After watching Johnny and Lisa’s sex scenes it is hard to imagine that she doesn’t have some kind of pleasure receptors in her belly button. Now that I think about it, I understand a bit better why she might be looking elsewhere for sex. Or I would if her sex with Mark were any better but they pretty much lay sideways next to each other whilst making furtive grabs down the ass of the other’s pants. And that is just the sex that Lisa is involved with. A couple of their friends stop by intermittently to get it on in Johnny and Lisa’s living room and it is treated as if it is no big deal.

It is hard to judge the acting here as the quality varies wildly from terrible to passable but it is hard to place the blame at the feet of the performers, aside from Wiseau, as the script and direction are not their fault. Given the performance that Wiseau gives as the writer and director I feel like the culpability points straight to him. The infamous scene at the florist is one of the best examples of just how bad the acting can be and how useless and unmotivated the majority of the scenes in the movie are.

Conclusion [0 out of 10 if you were to be seriously reviewing it 10 out of 1o if you were to be looking for the Citizen Kane of bad movies]

I could go on and on but the thing is you really need to experience the Room to really get how terrible it is. A lot of times things like this are over-hyped and exaggerated but I guarantee that anything you have ever heard about the Room is an understatement. It is physically painful to watch and so unintentionally funny that you may suffocate from laughter. I also encourage you to read up on Wiseau. The man is fascinating and if there isn’t an Ed Wood style biopic on him from a prominent and talented filmmaker in the future I will be very, very upset.