Watching The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s new movie about the making of the wonderfully horrible cult film The Room, is not a lot unlike watching The Room itself. Especially if you’re watching it with a theater full of people who’ve seen that 2003 picture—perhaps many times more than once—and can shout out whole clumps of dialogue from it. At midnight screenings in major cities where the movie has been attracting devotees for more than a decade, footballs fly down the aisles and cheap plastic spoons fill the air, along with hooted echoes of the movie’s many deathless lines. (“You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” “I definitely have breast cancer.” “Hi doggy.”)
As written, produced and directed by its star, the entirely untalented Tommy Wiseau, The Room is an aggressively awful film. It has no redeeming virtues: Its plot, its dialogue, its performances, its wretched scene-blocking—all are very bad. And so The Disaster Artist, directed by its star, James Franco, immediately prompts comparison to Ed Wood, Tim Burton’s 1994 tribute to the creator of Glen or Glenda, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and many other entertainingly terrible movies. But Wood’s complete lack of talent (if not passion) was compounded by a paucity of money for making his films. Wiseau does not have this problem: Among the several mysteries surrounding the man (how old is he? What planet is he from?), the most intriguing is the source of his money, of which he has lots. And yet, as loaded as he may be, he still made a cruddy movie. Which makes him an even worse filmmaker than Ed Wood. Which is really, really saying something, writes Kurt Loder in his latest review for Reason.
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