The Room Directed By Tommy Wiseau - Film Review

There are very few films out there that can be described as truly original. Although this probably isn’t one of those films, the viewing experience of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003) is something all in its self to behold. Written, directed, produced and starring Wiseau the film was created to be a low budget drama about betrayal, however upon release the film became something of a cult classic a kin to that of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

Yet the film isn’t ever really defiant in its style. It chooses to run with a fairly basic romantic drama plot, the cheating fiancé and best friend often seen in literature, films and soap operas alike. Then what is it that has separated this film from any other form of fiction with the same themes? Well, it’s the acting and dialogue really. You see almost every syllable or extrusion seems in the space of this film, to be warped. Performances here are so far out of the ordinary, it often seems as though they have come from a parallel universe via a fun house mirror.

Character motivation also seems to exist on its own term’s, as characters will change their minds on what they are doing at the drop of a hat. People don’t act like people. They seem to react in the most absurd illogical manner and yet the results of all of this come across as hilarious. This is by no means meant as an insult to the filmmaker, who I am sure set out to make a serious drama to tell a story that he himself felt very passionate about. Yet the way the film comes across to the viewer is so surreal in the most obscure manner that your primal gut reaction is to laugh. At first you laugh at the first few minutes believing that it will at some point probably dip into a bland melodramatic scene but it never really lets go. It keeps pushing gently with its surreal presentation and you never feel warn down by it.

In essence, the film seems to have this strange attraction to it in where the filmmaker has set out to create a kind of ego driven mellow drama, whereas in fact, he has ended up with a kind of bizarre comedy, which is only funny because everyone seems so ineptly strange. To describe it in the written form here might seem like a detriment, nevertheless to see it with your own eyes it becomes more a drift to mesmerising. There is something altogether special onto itself with The Room, which is an achievement within itself.

About six months ago, I attended a screening of The Room in which Tommy Wiseau was in attendance. During a short question and answer session a member of the audience asked how he felt about peoples reaction to the film. He replied along the lines of, (now I am paraphrasing here) ‘as long as you enjoy it, and take away something from it that’s fine. Because that’s what as a filmmaker you set out to do, engage your audience into an emotional reaction.’

So in a way, maybe that’s all a filmmaker can ask for. Perhaps the fact that his film didn’t engage his audience in the way that he set out to do didn’t bother him that much. And because of that he was willing to embrace the alternate method of which audiences viewed his film. Maybe it was enough for him that people enjoyed something he had put so much effort and passion into. Or alternatively, it could be he knew it would help to make more money back if he embraced this new audience perspective.

(For those interested in viewing the film after this analysis I also recommend watching the following video review here by Doug Walker also known as the internet personality The Nostalgia Critic.)