The Room (2003)

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This article is about the 2003 movie. You may be looking for the 2012 puzzle horror game made by Fireproof Games.

The Room

"I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bullsh*t! I did not hit her! I did not!... oh hi, Mark."
— Johnny

Genre:	Drama Romance
Directed By:	Tommy Wiseau
Produced By:	Tommy Wiseau
Written By/Screenplay:	Tommy Wiseau
Starring:	Tommy Wiseau Juliette Danielle Greg Sestero Philip Haldiman
Cinematography:	Todd Barron
Distributed By:	Chloe Productions TPW Films
Release Date:	June 27, 2003
Runtime:	99 minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Budget:	$6 million
Box Office:	$1,800

"The Room is a menagerie of conveniences, contrivances, and clichés. With ridiculous characters whose motivations change every few minutes, sets that look like they belong in a sixties episode of Doctor Who, and writing and dialogue SO bad that it makes crap like Transformers seem like Pulp Fiction in comparison. And you know what? It's f*cking glorious!"
— I Hate Everything

The Room is a 2003 independent romantic "comedy" drama directed, produced, and written by Tommy Wiseau, who also stars as the main character, Johnny, who struggles to get back at his fiancee, Lisa so that they can be married. Of course, Wiseau claimed that the flaws were intentional and the movie was a black comedy but fans knew it was a poorly-made drama, which was confirmed by the cast and crew members. It is often described as "so bad, it's good" and sometimes the "best worst movie of all time".

Plot

Johnny is a successful banker who lives happily in a San Francisco townhouse with his fiancée, Lisa. One day, inexplicably, she gets bored with him and decides to seduce his best friend, Mark. From there, nothing will be the same for Johnny again.

Why It Intentionally Tears Us Apart

Originally, Tommy Wiseau wrote The Room as a play in 2001 and then tried to adapt it into a 500-page book, which was unable to get published. Frustrated, Wiseau decided to adapt the work into a film with his creative control (including directing, producing, and writing all by himself). Thus, it ended up being what it was when the film was released.
A generic "romantic" storyline revolving around Johnny, Tommy Wiseau's character, and a successful banker, trying to get back at his fiancee, Lisa so that they can be married. However, it doesn't happen at all, and is just Lisa cheating on Johnny.
Tommy Wiseau's acting is considered some of the worst acting ever performed, with no believability coming from him at all. This was due to him always looking bored and tired while speaking out weak lines as well as his indescribable accent.
The film has multiple subplots that are left completely unresolved by the end, such as Denny's drug and money problem and Claudette's breast cancer (which is forgotten seconds later).
There are numerous continuity errors within the film, most of which are incredibly noticeable.
The tone is indeed inconsistent and tries to be like a comedy or something else.
The dialogue is portrayed very blandly since the actors are inexperienced and unfamiliar.
Paced and pointless scenes especially the talks between Lisa and her elderly mother, Claudette.
The movie is extremely repetitive and outright lazy:
- Too many panoramic exterior shots of San Francisco.
- The sex scenes are obviously recycled and are poorly done with Johnny described as having sex with Lisa's belly button. Speaking of which, the sex scenes in this movie are hilariously bad thanks to the music and the choices made in them such as Mark and Lisa's stairway scene, or the mostly offscreen blowjob given to Mike complete with awkward expressions.
- Every time Lisa seduces Mark, he always has to ask what's going on.
- The script constantly re-uses the idea of a character saying that they need to go somewhere before the scene ends with a location shot.
- The viewers need to be frequently told how "beautiful" Lisa is and it doesn't show that in the film.
There is no character development whatsoever in the film and there are many useless characters who serve no purpose to the main narrative other than filler.
False advertising: The poster and title give the impression that it's a horror movie when in reality, it's a romantic drama.
Wiseau himself gave almost no direction to the cast in the film. When Juliette Danielle asked for directions, Wiseau told her to watch the movie Eyes Wide Shut, forcing her to wing it as a villainess.
When Johnny says "you're just a chicken", he says "cheep! cheep! cheep! cheep!" instead of trying to say "bawk! bawk! bawk! bawk!" like how chickens sound, which is a lazy attempt at humorous jokes.
Mark seemingly can teleport, as he randomly appears in some scenes.
Most of the outdoor scenes use green screens instead of filming them outside.
Weird and bizarre moments.
- Johnny, Mark, Denny, and Peter playing football while wearing tuxedos. The players simply toss the ball back and forth from very short distances as if they don't know the rules.
- In a coffee shop, Johnny asks Mark about his sex life from out of nowhere.
- The legendary/infamous flower shop scene has Johnny reading his lines out of order, such that he is speaking one line ahead of the woman he's talking to. It is one of the most utterly surreal scenes ever put into film.
- There is a scene where Johnny shows his butt. (Tommy claimed "I have to show my ass or the movie won't sell.").
- In a very mundane climax, after Johnny trashes the apartment during a fight with Mark for “betraying” him along with all of the partygoers and friends, he takes Lisa's red dress and begins making a disturbing simulation. This scene was supposed to show how torn up he was, but the bad script and the weak character interactions made it fail.
  - It gets "better" when Johnny ends up shooting himself with a gun and dies.
- When Mark and Lisa find Johnny dead, Mark tells him to wake up while Lisa asks with a fake emotion if he is dead, neither of them seems to notice a puddle of blood behind Johnny's head.
- Several out-of-nowhere exterior shots of San Francisco before cutting back to the same scene.
- Characters in this movie take shockingly bad news too lightly.
- When Lisa tells her mother that Johnny became drunk and hit her, she is shocked to hear that Johnny was drunk rather than being a domestic abuser.
This film feels like a self-advertisement of Tommy Wiseau, as he only wanted people to see how great of a guy he was. The movie was also made due to Wiseau's frustration with not getting cast in any acting roles.

Redeeming Qualities

Mladen Milicevic did a great job composing the score. One notable example is the main theme.
Juliette Danielle and Dan Janjigian have convincing performances.
- In addition, Johnny's response after Denny said he loved Lisa is surprisingly profound and likely the only actual good dialogue in the entire film.
It has a cult following of being a "so bad, it's good" vein, and people may enjoy it.
- One of the lines, "I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bullshit! I did not hit her! I did not! Oh hi, Mark." is very memorable and will likely never get old, but later would spawn internet memes.
The songs from the film including You're My Rose by Kitra Williams, I Will by Wayman Davis, and Baby You and Me by Clint Jun Gamboa and Bell Johnson are decently beautiful to listen to. Here are the videos:

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Trivia

There is a book about this film written by one of the film's cast members, Greg Sestero (who had acted before this film in Patch Adams as one of the guests at Carin's funeral; he plays Mark in this film) called The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made which explores the film's troubled history. It's a truly interesting one. Said book got a film adaptation in December 2017, starring James Franco as Wiseau and Dave Franco as Sestero which ironically was praised by critics and even received a nomination for "Best Adapted Screenplay" at the 90th Academy Awards.
It received an unofficial video game adaptation, titled " The Room Tribute " by Newgrounds on September 3rd, 2010, telling the plot of the movie from Johnny's point of view. The game also helps clean up a ton of plotholes, such as the absence of Peter from the film's final act.
There is actually a website for it.
The lines "I did not hit her. It's not true. It's bullshit! I did not hit her! I did not!... oh hi, Mark.", "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!", and "I'm fed up with this world!" became internet memes.
- The lines have even been parodied by many people who made their memes out of them.
- Many people spelled the line as " I did naht hit her. it's naht true it's bullshit i did naaaaaaaht! oh hai Mark. "
Johnny's infamous "You are tearing me apart" line is a quote from the 1955 James Dean coming-of-age romantic drama film Rebel Without a Cause.
An assistant professor of film studies was the first person to call this film, "The Citizen Kane of bad movies".

Reception

The movie was widely panned by many critics who criticized its overall poor quality, mentioning, in particular, the acting and the nonsensical writing. It received a 26% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes with an average critic rating of 2.9/10 with a critical consensus reads, "A bona fide classic of midnight cinema, Tommy Wiseau's misguided masterpiece subverts the rules of filmmaking with a boundless enthusiasm that renders such mundanities as acting, screenwriting, and cinematography utterly irrelevant. You will never see a football the same way again." The film holds a 9/100 ("overwhelming dislike") on Metacritic, although the film gained a 5.2/10 ("mixed or average reviews") user score as of 2022, most of the reviews are sarcastic. The film holds a 3.6/10 on IMDb. While audiences too generally found the movie awful, it has become a cult classic among fans of bad movies, to the point of even getting midnight showings that fans attend dressed as their favorite character, similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and spawning popular memes from scenes where Tommy Wiseau doesn't pronounce words properly, such as "I did naht hit her!" and "...as a human bean".