The Room (2003)
Whenever you ask anyone who watches bad films what to watch next, there are always a few familiar faces in the list depending on what your criteria are. There are those films that are just bad stories; those that have bad special effects or even those that rely on a ‘stellar’ cast to go through the motions.
Take George Clooney for example. When you look at his film credits these days there are lots of big blockbuster movies to his name. There’s a little-known film however by the name of Return of the Killer Tomatoes that he starred in when he was just starting out. It’s a mad cap fun film and one that if you have a spare 90 minutes we would recommend watching.
Getting back to our list of films that people always say should be on our watch list, one film comes up time and time again, so we decided that it would only be right to go out there and make sure it’s reviewed.
This film is The Room and in any list you search online, it features near the top.
The premise is quite a simple one, anything of consequence happens within the room (or the house) of Johnny. We’ll come to the house a bit later in this review but needless to say, it’s not a very big room and when more than 4 people are in it, it seems over-crowded.
Johnny is happily engaged to Lisa and is quite clearly batting above his division. To carry the analogy further Johnny is Aldershot level (and no disrespect is intended to those fans) whilst Lisa is more Brighton and Hove Albion.
He comes home bearing a beautiful new red dress for Lisa and Denny following like a little lost puppy. . Denny is an odd character when you first meet him, probably 18 years old, naïve and clearly in love with Lisa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE6RQ8rC8hc
Johnny presents Lisa with the dress and decides that he wants some loving. He drags her upstairs (willingly) via a rickety spiral staircase (again more on this later) into the bedroom where he throws her on the bed amorously.
Denny, still downstairs at this point, decides that he’d like to chance his arm and climbs the stairs to see if he can get in on a little ménage-a-toi action.
At this point you’d not be wrong in thinking that you are about to watch some sort of creepy soft porn film and it certainly feels like that, however Denny is kicked out of the room hastily, so the real action can start.
What follows next is a seven-minute tour de force in everything soft porn shouldn’t be. Johnny’s chiselled buttocks make an appearance as do Lisa’s bared breasts being teased with the roses that he’s got by the side of the bed. There’s even the obligatory cut across of the ‘action’ where there is water cascading down a sheet of glass, whilst Johnny vigorously grinds Lisa’s hip. It’s not romantic, sensual or erotic. It’s just a recipe to get cock-burn.
It’s also worth mentioning at this point that the music does nothing to deter you from thinking that it’s a soft porn film. It’s almost like someone has taken the best (or worst whichever you prefer) of Peter Cetera, slowed it down, removed all the balladic qualities of said song and then make Johnny sing it (more on his involvement later).
Bearing in mind the film has been running for less than 5 minutes before we get to the uncomfortable love making scene it does make you wonder where the film is going. Thankfully we find that out shortly after Johnny and Lisa have finished their business.
As we find out, Lisa doesn’t love Johnny any more (despite putting out all the time) and when her mother comes to visit she tells her of her dissatisfaction. Even telling her at one point that she’s slept with someone else.
Her mother isn’t interested in her excuses however telling Lisa that Johnny is everything she needs for a financially secure future and this is further compounded when she tells Lisa that she tried to tap him up for some money for her friend to buy a house. Some would say that she might not have her daughter’s best interests at heart. Some might say she’s a fucking loon. Most of the time however she just a way of padding the film out.
Shortly after this Johnny comes home again with some flowers (without Denny in tow this time – he’s obviously found some money to start his own fast food restaurants) and what follows is another seven minute sex-a-thon that looks suspiciously like the first footage. We’re still only into the first 20 minutes of the film.
This makes me wonder whether the star, Tommy Wiseau, who incidentally paid for the film, directs the film and wrote the film has only created this ensemble so he can try and bone Lisa (played admirably by Juliette Danielle).
On the subject of our erstwhile star, he apparently made the money to make this film flogging Korean leather jackets and with a budget of reportedly $6,000,000 you’d have to sell a bloody lot of jackets to make that money.
Which begs the question, where did all the money on the budget go? Did Juliette get such a massive pay off that he could only afford to film one sex scene with him? The budget clearly wasn’t spent on the set which is about the size of three shoe boxes stacked on-top of each other and again, more on this below.
The secret probably lies in the fact that Tommy seems to have invested the majority of the budget in a studio where he could shoot the film and a production company to manage the film leaving precious little to pay the actors who clearly are not giving their all.
To give you an example there’s a scene a later on where Johnny, Mark (Johnny’s best friend), Denny (who’s just finished opening another restaurant) and Peter (Johnny’s psychologist friend) are all dressed up in tuxedos. They decide that it would be a good idea to go outside the house (which looks like a parking lot) and toss an American football about.
Apart from the tuxedo’s you would guess that this is a typical American male endeavour; well, apart from the fact that none of them are athletic (Mark is probably the closest to being a normal person, Johnny looks like an underfed Dracula, Denny obviously spends all his time whacking off to pictures of Lisa and Peter is more scholarly than athletic). This makes for an uncomfortable scene as they toss the ball around until Peter mishandles it, falls over, is helped to his feet, and is never seen again.
Apparently, Peter was paid a set fee for the film and
when his time was up, he just left and the final scene he was due to be in, was cut. Bizarre!
As we mentioned earlier, Lisa wants to get away from
Dracula and when his best mate Mark pops round to see him, she tries it on with him.
At first Mark rebuffs her pathetic attempts to seduce him until finally he can hold off no longer and there’s another sex scene on the stairs.
Thankfully this scene is a lot shorter than the ones involving Johnny. Whether this was by design to highlight Tommy Wiseau’s sexual prowess or, to cut the film down in size we will never know. We’d hate to think how long the film would be with all the sexual activity at seven minutes long…
This film is strewn with scenes that don’t seem to add anything to the narrative. For example, there a whole scene where two of Johnny’s friends use his front room as somewhere for some ‘alone’ time. Whether this is because they are cheating on their respective partners or they can’t go dogging we will never know. You could even say they are superfluous to the plot of the film, just like Lisa’s mother is. All you find out is that she’s a money grabbing bi-atch who doesn’t really care about her daughter.
Then there’s the two ball tossing scenes that seem so random. There’s just no point to them.
Anyway enough of that…
One of the most crucial parts of the film and something that sets up the finale happens on the roof and not even in the titular Room of the film. Denny is up there for no reason whatsoever and gets confronted by a gangster whom he owes money to. It seems Denny has been a naughty boy and had bought some drugs from the gangster and typically when you least expect it, he wants his money. It turns out Denny bought the drugs to sell on and somehow (probably because he used the money to open his restaurants) he doesn’t have it.
Thankfully Mark and Johnny decide to come up to the roof for no reason whatsoever and see Denny with a gun against his head. Mark and Johnny over power the gangster and lead him away, re-appearing 30 seconds later as if everything is ok. At least Lisa shows some real emotion in this scene as she questions Denny over his involvement with the bad guy. Johnny however acts as if everything is ok and comforts Denny.
This leads me on nicely to the layout of the building. We have a really small room where most of the action takes place. There’s a spiral staircase in the corner and a door that clearly leads outside. Somehow there is also a kitchen downstairs as we find out at Johnny’s birthday party (more on this later).
Firstly, the stairs seem lead to another sitting room where we are first introduced to Peter although this isn’t always the case as the stairs at the beginning of the film seem to lead to the bedroom. And talking of the bedroom, the stairs there seem to lead nowhere as they are clearly fake and end in a wall. It’s not only that…. The stairs are clearly in the wrong place.
There’s even another room off to the side of the downstairs living room that clearly can’t exist as there’s a window next to it. Could the small courtyard where they ‘boys’ casually toss the football around for the first time be outside this area?
Going back to the bedroom, if we assuming this is on top of the second sitting room and we just missed that bit in editing, it’s stated that Denny and Mark both live in the building making you feel that it’s an apartment block of some kind.
Yet if this is the case and they do live in the same building, the roof is so bloody small it can only be sitting on top of Johnny’s apartment. Mark and Denny both have access to it and if their own apartments were next door they would have their own roofs. And let’s not even get started on the shitty CGI backgrounds of the beautiful San Francisco that are smog clouded on a warm and sunny day.
This only leads us to believe there’s some kind of mystery room on the first floor that we never get to see. The toilet is connected as an en-suite to the bedroom and the kitchen is downstairs so what’s in the mystery room?
Is this mystery room where Johnny goes to get the tape recorder to hook up to the telephone when he wants to spy on Lisa’s phone conversations? Or maybe it’s some kind of sex dungeon and that’s why Lisa is dissatisfied with him as whenever he’s not with her, he’s masturbating to some kind of vampire porn or working out his chiselled buttocks. Maybe this room is where Mike and Denny live and the fact they are so close to Johnny’s bedroom is another reason why Lisa wants to get away.
Johnny starts to notice Lisa is not interested him anymore and in an effort to find out what’s going on he talks to Mark about it. Mark then regales him with a story of how some girl was banged by 12 blokes and then when her boyfriend found out he beat her up. Not the most pleasant of stories, by Johnny found it amusing which just goes to show that Lisa really should get away from him.
Eventually Johnny figures out what’s going on and confronts Mark as his surprise birthday party, because that sort of thing always happens. Johnny pushes Mark across the room and he falls over, Mark gets up and pushes Johnny and this goes round and round until Mark states that Johnny can’t satisfy her and that’s why she ran to him. It’s a real handbags at dawn fight and worth seeing for just how shockingly bad it is.
If the earlier sex scenes are anything to go by I’m pretty sure that Johnny is clearly a better lover, but that could be just because he’s the director and star.
We could go on but there are so many things wrong with the film it all ends in a mess, just like the film. We won’t spoil it for you but needless to say there’s a ton of over acting, a red dress and everyone being upset.
And that’s it!
As a plopcorn film, it really is bad. Really, really bad and one that you have to watch. But, and this is the crux of the matter and what divides us on where to score it; does it set itself up to be a plopcorn movie or is it just bad? We’ve scored films in the past based on entertainment value, watch-ability and things like this.
Was the film watchable? Just about
Was it entertaining? Just about
Were there any cameo’s? No
Did the film deliver what it set out? It tried hard but no.
After much debate we gave it 
but that’s only on the basis that a film this bad you must watch.
Would we watch it again? We had to when writing the review because there are so many things wrong with it, but we wouldn’t watch it again(unless we had to).
It’s a rather telling fact that the film is probably remembered most for the Johnny meme’s than for the film.
