Because I thought about it and realized: “Wait, I *was* sad when Johnny shot himself at the end.”
No, I had gotten attached to that crazy bastard. And all his wacky friends.
I think it’s why the film has lasted: You do like the characters. Even Lisa. They’re just so hopeless and strange.
For me, my feelings about The Room was I could almost see the movie Wiseau wanted to make. I could see the poignant drama about a man who thought that he was close to having everything he wanted, but watching it slip away through no (apparent) fault of his own.
He didn’t get the promotion he wanted. His “future wife” is bored and feels trapped, so she cheats on the main character with his best friend. His naive neighbor is in serious trouble. Random people are in his apartment. He is rapidly losing privacy, fidelity, and the expectation that if he does everything right, things will go well.
As I watch the actual film, I see that and the movie as it turned out: an unintentional comedy about denial of powerlessness and power and its effects. Oh, and before I seem to be going too deep, it gave us many terrible quotations.
It’s an atrocious film, of course.
But there is something oddly emotional and touching about it.
Because you do get what Tommy was going for.
He just lacked the writing and technical skills to pull it off.
That line towards the end , “I’m fed up with this world!” is something that unironically pops into my head when I’m particularly tired, stressed, or just…. fed up with this world.
The Room does have a certain psychological cleverness.
Like, when you think you’ve got a great life. And have achieved the American Dream~!
Beautiful future wife, nice condo, good job at the bank, loads of friends, etc. Johnny *has* tried to make the best of his life. He’s a nice person.
But scratch beneath the surface, and it all falls apart spectacularly quickly.
You suspect Tommy has more emotional depth than Michael Bay and some other ‘respectable’ Hollywood directors.
The best reading of The Room I’ve seen by far
One of the things that marks the truly classic Bad Movies like Plan 9, Manos, and The Room apart from just unwatchable crap is this sense of utter sincerity. Their creators genuinely believed they were making something awesome, and it fell apart because they had no idea what they were doing.
With any given Asylum movie, or the works of Seltzer and Friedberg, the people making it know it’s crap and don’t care.
Michael Bay gets a bit weird on the scale because he’s in this odd quantum space at both ends because he cares about the technical quality of the product and largely succeeds there while still being horrible at a lot of the important bits of film-making (like the aforementioned lack of emotional depth). One also gets the impression that he’s largely filming Explodarrific Summer Blockbusters™ to satisfy a serious Mad Bomber urge in a relatively safe and socially acceptable way.
I’m not quite convinced The Room did fall apart, though.
You are given a likeable protagonist. His friends are likeable too. And, if you look closely enough, you get the themes.
Not that I’m nominating it for Oscars anytime soon. Because it’s, you know, terrible on every technical level.
But, as a take on the dark side of the American Dream, it’s honestly less annoying and pretentious than American Beauty or Revolutionary Road.
The Room will always be one of my top ten favorite movies. Everyone who worked on it put their heart and soul into it and that really shines through.
Claudette really is one of best bitchy mother-in-law figures ever.
No, a little thing like breast cancer doesn’t bother her
BUT HOW DARE HAROLD TRY AND STEAL MY HOUSE? AND WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LOVE JOHNNY WHO PROVIDES FOR YOU, AND ME TOO!
Claudette was hardcore.
Reading ‘The Bad Movie Bible’ by Rob Hill. It’s quite good. He’s one of the first film critics I know of to argue that The Room is emotionally effective as a movie beyond just “Lol, this is all stupid!”
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