The Room - A Poorly Attempted Review

The Room - a poorly attempted review

This post is dedicated to the friend who gave me his spare ticket. I would say more nice words but his ego is big enough and I already bought him a chicken kebab.

Holy shit, Tommy Wiseau. Holy shit.

On Saturday night I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see The Room. This is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. I’m gonna frame my ticket. Holy shit.

The Room is described as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.” Audiences all over the world have gathered together to touch base with their inner bitches and laugh at this film. It’s so bad that it came out the other end and is now cinematic gold.

The Room is the world’s most hilariously confusing soft-core mystery-porn. Who knew that was a genre? I would give a breakdown of the plot but I honestly don’t know what the fuck happened. There was a love triangle. There were framed spoons in the background (of course I’m not kidding). There was a football. There was boning and it was awkward. Things didn’t make any damn sense.

The three primary actors are Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), Lisa (Juliette Danielle) and Mark (Greg Sestero). Johnny is the main character. He has an accent that I can’t place. The best description I can think of is Arnold Schwarzenegger: drunk and high. Mark is his best friend and we know this because it gets repeated. A lot. Lisa is Johnny’s “hot” fiancé but is cheating on him with Mark. Lisa is probably my favourite character out of the lot. Think of the 3 trashiest towns in your area. She is a combination of their finest, but with a super special extra dose of crazy. At one point it’s announced that she is pregnant, but she then back tracks and says that she made it up because she was bored. BORED! Ahahahaha!

It’s like Tommy Wiseau wanted to make a film about the Dawson-Joey-Pacey love triangle from Dawson’s Creek. But he wanted to make everything worse: acting, actors, dialogue, sets, shots - EVERYTHING! He also decided to throw in a bit of the drama from Dawson’s Creek, but didn’t which ones to go with. Happily, Wiseau seems to have looked at all his options and decided that shit, they’re all good! Imma use ‘em all.

Every subplot was picked up and dropped almost immediately. But that's okay because these unexplored subplots certainly bring the LOLs. A secondary character gets roughed up by a drug dealer that he owes money to, and then it's never mentioned again. Another character announces that she has cancer. Her 5-second announcement is all the time that is spent on this. How fabulous is that?

Sometimes/often when I go to movies I end up laughing loudly at inappropriate times. I’m usually the only one. Not this time. The laughter was so intense that I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing a few times. I’ve never been in a movie with audience participation like this. There were waves of plastic spoons being thrown. That’s not an exaggeration – those bastards kept flying over the crowd. After all, why clap when you can throw a spoon? I left the cinema to the sounds of laughter and plastic spoons being crunched underfoot. Good times.

The experience of seeing this film was overwhelming. The movie itself is awesomely bad, but the experience of being in that audience was on a level that I've never seen before. We were still quoting lines from this movie at 3am-ish while eating a Kebab after several hours of drinking. At one point, we were trading/yelling one liners with another table who’d been at the same film. I've spent 3 days working on this damn review because every time I sit down to write something, I get overcome by the whole experience. This wasn't really a film that was meant to entertain and tell a story. This was a vanity project that went horribly wrong. This 'shrine' to Tommy Wiseau's self-perceived greatness has turned him into a bizarre joke and apparently he's cool with it, to the point where he shows up and sells merchandise at midnight screenings.

I knew it was gonna be a good night when I got ID’d while buying a bottle of Tui. It was more than that. It was transcendent. I live in a post-Wiseau world now. Come join me. We have footballs.

Breaking out a good pick up line is an art. When you come across a good one, like a really good one, then it's pretty spectacular.

Some of the ones in this Mad Men montage are kinda corny. But if they were delivered that smoothly and confidently, then yeah. I'd bite. 

Pole dancing - it's a sport

Does this mean that walking into strip clubs is now okay, because you are watching athletes perform at their peak level?

Seriously though, I think it's great. YAY!!

No more smoking for prisoners!

Judith Collins is either a complete badass or is on a suicide mission. It's hard to tell at this point.

Collins announced yesterday that smoking is to be banned in prisons from 1 July 2011. This will be known as the day when prisoners all over the country start experiencing nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Damn, I would not want to be anywhere near a prison that week.

Prisoners and smoking - it's a natural combination. I know this is true, because I see it on films and TV. And they never lie to us! Collins seems to have other ideas.

Why is it that every other workplace can be smokefree except for Corrections? I find that unfair

Say what? Man, the prison guards probably have a very different definition of 'unfair'.

I'm a fan of banning smoking from the workplace. Banning smoking from, say, the offices of an accountancy firm is kinda sucky, but you'll live. Office workers will bitch to hell and back if you ban smoking. In extreme cases, there may even be an email petition but they will eventually step into line or find another job. Banning smoking from a prison is hella sucky and you are almost guaranteed a riot. Shit will get real.

In all seriousness, I understand banning smoking from inside prison cells. That's all cool. But why aren't there smoking areas for those who do smoke? There are smoking areas in other workplaces (usually in the parking lot out the back or something of that description). I'm sure that it would be easier to manage if there were options available to those who wanted to carry on inhaling the sweet, smoky taste of nicotine. Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. I'm not a politician/almighty decision maker and I don't need to reassert how much of a hardass I am.

Like the McChrystal fracas, this isn't about health. It's about politics. Any idiot can see that. Yes, it's important that we respect the health and rights of non-smoking prisoners and employees. I totally agree with this. I just think that this could've been done in a smarter way. A way that ensures the prison guards don't end up shitting themselves on 1 July next year. 

Warning: may induce rage and disgust

So, a guy recorded a live-streamed rape and blogged about it on StickyDrama (I'm not linking to that shit - go do your own google search), a website primarily for tweens and teenagers. And he didn't report the rape to police

Yes, that's real. Wanna know what makes it worse? This guy is the owner of StickyDrama and is 31 years-old. But wait! There's more! He eventually handed his evidence over to police - but only after they seized his software 3 months later.

That shit makes me sick. Go ahead and click on the link. It creates all sorts of rage. But the most stab-inducing one is the following quote:

"We could not help but feel the handling of the warrant was … well … rude! We would have happily handed over our recording to the police, had they only asked us. But instead of sending a courteous email, the police took our server offline without warning.

The fuck, bitch? Seriously? The police had to ask nicely for the rape evidence that you had? The fact that they had to even ask was bad enough but you wanted them to say please? This guy makes 4chan look almost bearable. Almost.

What the fuck happened to respect? Do we really have to keep educating people about how wrong rape is? What makes a person think it's okay to make fun of a rape victim? What the hell is wrong with people??

Argh, too much rage. I can't even finish writing this.

OMFG!

So, someone saw Eclipse and DIED! Just died in the cinema. The cleaners found him the next day.

This leaeds to a few thoughts:

Which cinema?

Which chair?

It was in the front row? I am never sitting in the front row.

OMG did I know him?

Twilight movies cause death

If I see this film, I might die

Shit. I should stop washing my sugar down with whiskey