The Disaster Artist (2017)
Review of The Disaster Artist (2017), directed by James Franco
It has always been my wildest dream to go and see a midnight screening of The Room. And I was going to do it, until a small devil called COVID-19 got in the way of wild dream of being able to throw spoons at a screen. I’ve seen it pirated on YouTube, but it’s not the same experience man. You have to really at a live screening of The Room with a bunch of passionate dorky strangers to truly understand the magic that went on in this film.
And this is what The Disaster Artist is trying to get at. Classified as a biographical comedy, it depicts the events that led up to the creation of filming The Room, down to the naive nineteen year old who is strung along for the ride with the eccentric Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau is the character of the century, and, I will admit, James Franco put an interesting twist on him as a character. No idea if it was realistic; rumor has it Wiseau is actually in the post-credits scene. I didn’t stick around long enough to watch at that point.
With all of this said, let’s jump into this review, shall we?
Content
This is a film based off of real events, also known as the filming of the worst movie in existence: The Room. This movie is a full on classic in today’s cinema society for how bad it is, but once upon a time, it started out as a dream for young Greg Sestero and Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau is a strange actor in Sestero’s acting class who claims he is from Louisiana, despite having a thick European accent. This guy is also questionably wealthy and extremely an oddball.
Wiseau randomly takes Sestero to his LA apartment and they start their new lives together trying to make it as actors. While Greg is landing auditions and agents, Wiseau is rejected by everyone he meets because of how over-the-top he is. Which leads him into making The Room and showing the entire world how wild he is.
James Franco as Tommy Wiseau made my day. He did such a good job as Tommy Wiseau that I legitimately thought he could impersonate him professionally. Some other notable mentions that made me crack up was Zac Efron as the Armenian-American boxer who keeps cussing and looks like he’ll beat the shit out of everyone in the room.
Josh Hutcherson also cracked me up, he looked like a random kid they plucked off of the street to be in this film. I’ve never seen Seth Rogen in a serious film, but he is often the voice of reason on this set. Which made it so much more funny to me at the end of the day.
There are indeed moments that are a bit more sad and reveal more about Tommy. He’s probably this lonely guy who’s looking for a purpose in life, which is why he probably gets upset at why Greg tries to leave him. A bit possessive, yes, but you also got to think this guy has to be hella lonely in order for him to make friends with a random nineteen year old.
But at the end of the day, these two guys really sucked at acting but kept going towards their dreams. As much as we may laugh at them like the audiences do that their serious attempt of movie (The Room), they were out here living their dreams. Slightly sketchy that Tommy randomly has two apartments in major cities and dropped six million dollars for the film, but, hey, at the end of the day let’s not question it.
I do think Franco did have to adapt Wiseau to a more palatable diet; in real life, he supposedly was much more worse than in the film. If you had seen this film cold though and had no awareness of what The Room was, I bet you you’d think that this was all a work of fiction. It was indeed not. I think Franco made this moment of history and made it into something that was so much better than what it actually is.
Overall Thoughts
I don’t think you need to be a major fan of The Room in order to want to watch this film. We see at the very end how exactly Franco recreated scenes from The Room in this movie; during the credits they put the two films and their scenes together side-by-side. It’s also pleasant to see the Franco brothers and Seth Rogen in something that isn’t a stoner trip ride. I think this shows their acting chops in a better manner than what we usually see them in. This is an awesome film to watch on a date night or just for fun.
