"The Room" thoughts by Andy

Gloriously awful. Painful, yet hilarious. I somewhat loathed the idea of watching another movie known simply for how terrible it is, but I'm glad we suffered through. I honestly have never had so much fun watching such a horrible movie. My voice is still hoarse from yelling at the TV.

So what did I learn from watching "The Room?" I learned that I, off the couch, could make a better movie. I also learned that bombing a movie requires sucking at several facets:

1. Have terrible acting. Wisseau and company do this in spades. Of the several credited actors, only one or two had been in anything not "Wisseau related (he has one other film, a documentary called "Homeless in America")." This does not surprise me. The acting was laughable in EVERY SCENE. Only the thug had a decent delivery of his lines.

2. Have a non-sensical plot. I get the film's point as a whole, but can someone please explain to me what the deal was with Denny? I couldn't tell if he was a pervert, or just a drug dealer, and if he was a drug dealer, why did he owe the thug money?

3. Have characters that don't stay through the film. Yes, we meet a friend who is a psychologist, and then later on the film, he's just gone. No explanation of why he wasn't at the party with all of the other friends. imdb.com trivia says that actor left the project after having creative differences with Wisseau. Not surprising. I too almost left the project after having creative differences with Wisseau. The actor must have realized the movie sucked. His lines were then given to another guy whose name I don't believe is given, and whose lines are supposed to be very confrontational and dramatic. They were not.

4. Make me hope for the death of the main character in the denouement. Score!!! Yes, when Johnny was contemplating suicide in the last scene, after his fiance left him for his best friend, I openly cheered for him to shoot himself. And he did. Thank goodness. And then, when bestfriend and ex-fiance walk in, it of course unravels for their relationship. BFF suggests to gal-pal that this will be great for their new relationship, only to find that gal-pal no longer likes him, but is now in love with Johnny (or at least his corpse). End of movie!!!!!

5. Have atrocious production values. Actually, that phrase is somewhat of a misnomer here as there was no value in the production. The entire film occurs in three or four scenes (with some non-sensical football tossing scenes). It would not have been difficult to shoot such a movie, yet almost no attention was paid to set design. And the entire film was shot in both HDTV and 35mm, apparently because Wisseau didn't know the difference between the two.

So what you are left with is an awesomely bad film. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys film enough to mock something terrible. Watch it with a friend. I know this would not have been any fun to watch without Jason and Karl. And keep your remote hand to back-up and re-watch a scene. Yes, it was that good.

My final question is this: Not only was this film released onto the big screen, it was nominated and actually WON a New York International Independent Film & Video Festival audience award for Best Feature film. Really? Really?????

thoughts by Andy