Our look at movies that are bad, bad, bad includes “The Room.”
In 2003, a mysterious former San Franciscan named Tommy Wiseau tested the looseness of the terms “actor,” “director” and “screenwriter” with his self-released film “The Room.”
Set in San Francisco but mainly shot in Los Angeles, the film stars Wiseau as a cuckolded banker named Johnny. It bombed in its initial Los Angeles theatrical run but reemerged as a midnight-movie cult favorite.
James Franco stars as Wiseau in “The Disaster Artist,” which opens Friday, Dec. 1, and details the making of “The Room.” The movie is based on the book of the same name by Greg Sestero, who co-starred in “The Room” as Johnny’s treacherous best friend, who is the secret lover of Johnny’s charmless fiancee ( Juliette Danielle).
“The Room” cost $6 million to make, but it looks like it cost $140,000. Several rooftop scenes take place before an obviously fake San Francisco backdrop. The film’s airless love triangle entails a lingering shot of Wiseau’s nude posterior that Wiseau uses in two scenes and an uncomfortable-looking sex scene on a spiral staircase.
“The Room” is bad on its own, but also the nadir of a period, from 2001 to ’03, that ranks among cinema’s worst. Vying for low point with “The Room” were “Freddy Got Fingered,” “Glitter,” “Swept Away” and “Gigli.”
Why this was a golden age for bad movies is hard to say. But this time period started with sex scandal-plagued Bill Clinton exiting the White House and conservative George W. Bush entering it. The terrible 2001-03 movies’ rampant yet unerotic sex scenes appear to reflect this confusing time for sexuality in America.
The films’ most common trait is ego, since most are star vehicles for people with no business trying to carry a movie.
To be clear, the films below are not so bad they are good. In the past 25 years, only “Showgirls” has met that standard. But there is joy to be derived from a few of them. Especially “The Room.” “Freddy Got Fingered” (2001): Tom Green’s gross-out comedy lacked the fun, and comparative comic finesse, of the “Jackass” films that would follow. As an unemployed cartoonist who engages in degenerate acts for kicks, Green bugs his eyes and oversells every gag, killing the possibility of laughs or even shock value. “Glitter” (2001): Mariah Carey showed she could act in 2009’s “Precious,” as a no-nonsense social worker who was clearly not Mariah Carey. Perhaps this “A Star Is Born” rip-off, in which she plays a singer on the rise, was too close to autobiography. Carey is self-conscious here, barely registering emotion. She keeps her expressions contained, as if performing for a still instead of a movie camera. “Swept Away” (2002): Choppily edited and badly acted (though only by Madonna), this awful Guy Ritchie remake of the 1974 Lina Wertmuller film stars Madonna as a haughty socialite who belittles a deckhand on a pleasure cruise. The deckhand gets his revenge once he and the socialite are stranded together on an uninhabited island.
Once there, he smacks and kicks her and
“The Room” (far left) came out in 2003 and marked the lowest point ina three-year stretch that included many films infamous for how bad they are, including “Glitter” (above), “Freddy Got Fingered,” “Gigli,” and “Swept Away.”
denies her food. Also, they fall in love. What appears meant to be a dominant/submissive consensual vibe comes across as abusive.
“Gigli” (2003): That Justin Bartha (“The Hangover”) kept working regularly after his cringe-worthy performance as a developmentally disabled man here testifies to Hollywood’s short memory. Or it might just show that no one in Hollywood watched “Gigli” when it came out.
Bartha plays a kidnapping victim being hidden by a pair of criminals played by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. But this crime (thriller? comedy?) seems to exist mostly so Lopez’s character can profess several times to be a lesbian before bedding Affleck’s character. Because “Chasing Amy” apparently was not enough to show the Sapphism-fighting power of Affleck’s chiseled handsomeness.
“The Room” (2003): The sheer unlikelihood of this movie ever being finished, or seen, is what makes it so fun at times. Wiseau cannot deliver a believable line, less because of his accent (he has said he lived in France and New Orleans before San Francisco; the accent says “Iron Curtain”) than the peculiar cadence of his speech. But all of “The Room” is off. It plays as if it has been dubbed, when it wasn’t.
The editing can seem random. Story lines are introduced and abandoned. In one scene, all the male characters wear tuxedos for no discernible reason.
The standout scene is one in which Johnny, a striking, muscular man with long, jet-black hair, goes unrecognized at his favorite flower shop. It is only after he doffs his tiny sunglasses that the clerk can make him out.
Wiseau writing this scene is one thing. But shooting it, and then seeing it, and then deciding to keep it in a film — that’s audacious.