I’ve been seeing midnight screenings of The Room, one of the 5 worst movies ever made, for over a decade. I come armed with spoons, quotes, and a little football. Occasionally, Tommy Wiseau, the man behind this legendary hot mess, would show up and just become even more weird than he already was. I knew his story would be like shooting fish in a barrel in the right hands, and boy did Wiseau land in perfect hands. James Franco’s The Disaster Artist does poke fun at this train wreck, but like the talent he is, Franco finds some real stuff to make you think about Tommy Wiseau differently.
We meet the enigmatic Tommy (James Franco) through Greg Sestero (James’s brother Dave), a shy struggling actor in San Francisco. Watching Tommy fearlessly show himself on stage inspires Greg to strike a friendship with this strange, kinda creepy guy. The two inspire each other to move to Los Angeles and pursue acting careers. That, as expected, fails hilariously. So the two, just chatting, suggest making a movie, and Tommy just….agrees to finance/make one. But there are limitations to having a crazy alien creature as the creative force of a movie, as Greg, script supervisor Sandy (Seth Rogen), and the rest of the cast realize as this shoot goes off the rails.
While watching The Disaster Artist, I reached an epiphany about 20 minutes into the movie: I was watching your classic hero underdog story. Greg and Tommy are what Journey would call the small town girls, living in a lonely world, ready to take a midnight train…to see James Dean’s gravesight. Not quite as catchy, but the metaphor mostly works. These two guys are just following their dreams to Hollywood to be in the movies! Thus, when you watch this shoot fail so spectacularly, you end up feeling awful for these guys, instead of laughing at how stupidly they thrust this upon themselves. There’s a scene where you see a screening of The Room, and Tommy clearly hates how it is being received; a lesser movie would have had him scream at that audience for not understanding, but The Disaster Artist takes the moment seriously, and I had real pangs of hurt for Tommy for not making the perfect film he wanted to make. In fact, I was so into the story I could have used another 10 -20 minutes of screen time about how Tommy’s view of his movie changed as time as gone on (for the record, most movies need less screen time, not more). The Disaster Artist adds the humanity to The Room that was clearly missing from Wiseau’s movie, and The Disaster Artist achieves great heights because of this.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the biggest reason I recommend this movie is how damn funny it is. It’s at least 30 minutes before we get to the making of the movie, and I was already doubled over laughing at talking heads waxing poetically about The Room, Tommy being judged by acting teachers, or the crazy stuff Greg has to go through to get an agent. The movie obviously, goes into the stratosphere when the movie production gets started. Tommy is so in over his head nutty, that continually bouncing different comedians off of him just gets funnier and funnier. We see Sandy just agreeing to scenes he knows are bad cause it will end his day early so he can get lunch. The actors asking why their character gets breast cancer and the movie never mentions this again (that really does happen in the movie) and getting just bizarre responses leads to some great reaction shots from really funny people. The laughs culminate at the end where we see shot for shot remakes of scenes for the movie, making me hope Franco re releases The Room with talent to see if it’s better.
I don’t normally do this, but I have to mention the acting here. Dave Franco has really turned into a quality actor, and he gives Greg enough aw shucks quality to come off as a nice guy who wants to do right by his friend. There’s a crazy amount of comedy cameos (I would’ve loved to be on The Disaster Artist’s set as much as The Room’s set) that will make any comedy fan giddy with each moment. But as we all know, this movie sinks or swims with James Franco, and how good his Tommy Wiseau is. I don’t know how long Franco took to learn Wiseau’s accent, his lazy eye, or his stare, but all that time clearly paid off. I never thought someone could make me think of Tommy Wiseau because of how strange that guy is, but Franco, a strange guy himself, was made for this; this is going to be one of Franco’s 5 best performances, as he captures all the pieces of Tommy Wiseau that make him compelling: single minded, kinda nice, sorta misogynistic, enigmatic…I could go on and on.
I was out the night before I saw The Disaster Artist in Australia. I asked a girl I was chatting with “I think I’m gonna see The Disaster Artist tomorrow, it’s based on this really bad movie.” And the girl responded “Oh yeah, The Room! I’ve seen it with my mates a bunch of times!” AUSTRALIA!! Even though this movie is not the movie Tommy Wiseau was making, The Disaster Artist is here to point out to you that it doesn’t matter, this movie keeps you coming back. Just admit you like it, don’t be a chicken…CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP.