In the
market for a movie date this coming Valentine’s Day but want to avoid the usual
RomCom clichés? Affairs of the heart have rarely been so absurdly and ineptly
dramatized as they are in The Room, a notorious and unintentionally
hilarious cult film oft -reputed to be the Citizen Kane of bad
movies, which is starting at Champaign’s Art Theater on Friday, February
11.
Director-writer-star-producer-executive
producer (yes, he’s a quintuple-threat) Tommy Wiseau spent millions of his own
money to bring his vision to the screen, and no amount of description –or warning — can adequately prepare the
viewer for the noxious masterpiece of cluelessness that is The Room. The
plot, such as it is, is sub-soap opera fodder: Johnny (Wiseau, simultaneously sleepwalking
and overacting) is engaged to Lisa (the repugnant Juliette Danielle); she is
having an affair with Mark (Greg Sestero, apparently carved from balsawood); oh
yeah, Mark just happens to be Johnny’s best friend. That’s pretty
much the extent of the story. But the myriad ways the filmmakers manage to
botch this simplest and most well-trodden of narratives is mindboggling. The
film’s 99 minutes consist of a seemingly endless parade of unnecessary subplots,
stilted dialogue, gratuitous sex scenes and even-more-gratuituous impromptu
football games.
But
unlike most purely bad films, The Room never fails to entertain — a
fact which might even call into question its bad film status. Wiseau’s
flailing, desperate attempts at drama and pathos are so sincerely and
passionately misguided that at times the viewer almost begins to root for him
to get something right (spoiler: he doesn’t). Over the years since its
initial release, screenings of The Room have become wild, noisy, interactive events a-la Rocky Horror Picture Show, including call-and-response routines
with the screen, pickup football games in the aisles and, inexplicably enough,
torrential storms of plastic spoons.
So grab
your sweetheart and check in to The Room this
Valentine’s Day. You could do worse than
basking in Tommy Wiseau’s romantic and cinematic failures: rest assured that
whatever problems you might be working through, it probably will never get this bad.
Here’s the trailer:
For Directions
and showtimes visit http://www.thecuart.com/
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2011.
