The Room

Have you ever watched a film so revolutionary and ground-breaking that you knew it would change the face of American cinema forever?  Well, we don't have time to talk about the movie you've just seen, we have to talk about The Room.

Tommy Wiseau is the architect of The Room - and boy, are his eyes tired.

As belabored by the establishing shots in the opening credits (as well as throughout the film) The Room is set in San Francisco and centers around Lisa (Juliette Danielle) and Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) who live in a magical row home which, once entered, turns into a multi-unit apartment building, complete with a large rooftop deck.  Also resident within its mystical brick walls are Mark (Greg Sestero), Johnny's best friend, and Denny (Philip Haliman), the mentally challenged orphan Johnny is putting through college.

Johnny appears to be some sort of exhausted, shape-shifting alien, posing as a gothic banker who deals mostly in secretive clients and bundles.  His fiancée, Lisa is a stay-at-home plotress who mentioned "the computer business" once or twice, but I believe this is a product of the ongoing stroke she is suffering.  After watching that half-awake giggle machine crawl on top of her less than six minutes into the film, an interruption of blood supply to her brain was the only conclusion I could make. 

That's right, we achieve naked, terrifying, thrusting Wiseau within the first six minutes.  I truly believe you could mentally castrate sex offenders with this footage.

By the next day, Lisa is desperately bored with Johnny, so she confides in her nose-booping "stupid bitch" of a mother, Claudette (Carolyn Minnott).  With one quick call to Mark, Lisa manages to obligate him over for a second sex scene by the seventeen minute mark. 

This would seem to be a pretty standard love triangle, but what you have to understand is that this movie is 10 lbs. of preposterous plot and dialogue in a 10 dram vial.  People wander into that apartment just for the purpose of wandering right the hell back out.  If you're on the rooftop, you're either in grave danger or in the middle of shooting a manpon commercial.  If you have cancer, shrug it the hell off - but if you shave your beard, this demands attention.  Plenty of seating?  Squat in front of the doorway.  Over the age of two?  Go to bed at 6pm.  Holding a folder?  Order the hot chocolate.   

Lisa's incomprehensible bitchcraftery comes to a climax when she grudgingly throws Johnny a surprise birthday party.  At least I think he was surprised - sleepy, half-hearted chuckles are his reaction to everything.  This is where the real shit goes down - but before it can go down, due to the magical properties of the building, it makes its way up to the rooftop, for some air - and then back down, for a second helping of cake.

Watching this movie is like being shot in the common sense by a machine gun filled with absurdity ammunition.  There's no time to recover from one moment of lunacy to the next - don't even try, you'll pull something.  The narrative thread is a hairball, and your mind is Tommy Wiseau's cat box.

In other words, you've got to see this movie.