The Room is more or less set in San Francisco, and the axis of the plot revolves around the health of the relationship between Johnny and Lisa, his girlfriend. The title is a reference to their bedroom, which starts as a place of harmony then deteriorates until the denouement. The movie feels as if the actors originally spoke another language then was dubbed into English by people who are not actors. At times, it feels like a series of bad R&B music videos that black people refused to appear in or an 80s sitcom that got rejected from the television studio that is missing a laugh track. The story bears little to no resemblance to reality in the way that it depicts age, relationships, sports, crime, the way that people move in space, especially pillow fights.
I only watched The Room so I could understand The Disaster Artist, which automatically means the latter gets a point deducted for raising the profile of the prior more than it already deserved. I get that The Room is like The Rocky Horror Picture Show for its audiences, but no disrespect intended to those involved in The Room, everyone involved in The Rocky Horror Picture Show was actually good at what they did then went on to do ground breaking work, and the story, albeit a strange one, made sense. I understand that people love it because it is bad, and I have a handful of awful movies that I love to watch and ridicule, but not only was this movie not the kind of bad that I enjoy, I’m low key mad.
I know that financial success does not always correlate with the quality of the product. When I watch bad movies, I’m not helping those people to prosper, but in The Room’s case, it may have taken a long time, but it has to be making tons of money with the midnight showings. With the renewed interest from Hollywood, there is no sign that its popularity will ebb. Tommy Wiseau, the director, producer, writer and lead actor, is getting rewarded for making not only a bad movie, but a problematic one. I hate to wear the humorless, liberal hat, but the whole movie is predicated on women being duplicitous manipulators who are only good for sex and can’t financially support themselves.
Even as the hero of his own film beloved by all but one, Wiseau sees himself as a beleaguered, exploited and lonely man despite objective markers of success and overwhelming love and support from others. He feels like he has nothing despite an unrealistic chorus of approval and good will, which is bleak as hell. On one hand, I’m extremely empathetic about his mental dysmorphic disorder on the state of his life. On the other hand, try not having everything then talk to me as you fail and still manage to fall up. Must be nice.
If you are going to see The Disaster Artist, you kind of have to see The Room. I watched it alone and felt the keen unrecoverable loss of 99 minutes of my life, but others who love the movie seemed to be aided by seeing it in a group setting. I would not want to spend my money or extra travel time that way, but you do you.