☆☆☆
You know the awkward feeling when you go to a party where everyone knows everyone except you? Everyone's out there laughing about stories you don't remember and people you've never met. Before you give in and just enjoy the frivolity, it's awkward.
That's the sensation that comes with watching The Disaster Artist. The movie it's based on is called The Room, and it's about how a real man named Tommy Wiseau made it with a bizarre, single-minded determination that is simultaneously ridiculed and admired by everyone who sees The Room, which is often considered one of the worst movies ever made.
The Room really is an awful movie, though the truth is it's less of a legitimate attempt to make a film than the result of an amateur who had a lot of money but very little talent and even less experience.
The Disaster Artist is the host of the party for The Room -- and it assumes that if you've RSVP'd, you're good friends with everyone who's showing up. There's a bouncy, insouciant attitude toward the proceedings, which begin with celebrities talking about their love of The Room and the affectionate respect (or is that disrespect?) they have for Wiseau, who has become an object of ironic worship. The on-camera celebrities are names like Kristen Bell, Keegan-Michael Key, Adam Scott and J.J. Abrams, and if those names are of only hazy awareness, that may be your first cue that The Disaster Artist is going to be a little too insiderish for your taste.
I've seen The Room once -- and for the most part, it really is a once-is-enough film, a kind of experience that somehow sears itself into your memory and consciousness, though it is genuinely not good, not interesting and funny only because it is so transcendently bad.
The people who made The Disaster Artist, especially director and star James Franco, have seen it way more than once, and they largely revel in their ability to recreate the film and its multi-hyphenate creator with uncanny perfection.
James Franco and his brother Dave are the two leads of The Disaster Artist, and it's the younger Franco who registers best even though his older brother has the far showier role. James Franco embodies the role of this weird, hulking, disturbing man with both precision and glee. But as the film goes out of its way to say over and over again, Wiseau is a cipher: No one knows who he is, where he's from, why he's rich, how old he is, or whether he's mentally deranged. They just know he exists, and that's all the film seems to know, too.
The Disaster Artist fully expects (as was the case with the people sitting next to me) that his mere presence will elicit chuckles. In Wiseau-speak: He crazy person. He funny and he so weird. But The Disaster Artist doesn't take it much further than that. James Franco is insanely good in the role, but in the way a drag queen is insanely good: The very point is not to know the performer or the character. From a narrative standpoint, that leaves The Disaster Artist a little slack. Tommy Wiseau is Tommy Wiseau, he allows no insight into what moves him and the film offers none.
That's where Dave Franco does the heavy lifting. He plays actor Greg Sestero as a loyal friend, a fool who buys into Wiseau's bizarre dreams, a willing accomplice who enables every bad behavior and lousy idea Wiseau has, at least in part because he's not too smart himself, and in part because he really does admire the way Wiseau can't see his own sheer lack of talent. Dave Franco brings more complexity and nuance to the role than maybe it deserves.
Beyond Dave Franco, the rest of the movie is not too far removed from the other Hollywood in-joke silliness that the Franco Brothers and actor/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have brought to their other bawdy, ironic industry satires like This Is the End and The Interview. The Disaster Artist is a more wholly conceived and fulfilling movie than those, but only slightly.
That's because despite James Franco's surface level impersonation of Wiseau, there is something weirdly admirable about what he accomplished even with something as stupefyingly awful as The Room: He got his movie made. People saw it. They turned it into a cult classic that has (as The Disaster Artist points out) turned a profit. And now someone's made a movie about him.
That's an astonishing degree of success for a failure, and The Disaster Artist knows it. If you're not friends with everyone in the room, you may find this party an insufferable bore -- it's not far different from the Burt Reynolds-Hal Needham comedies of the 1970s when everyone cracked up at each others' jokes and seemed to be having way more fun than the audience. But if you stick it out, you may find that once you figure out who's who and what's what, The Disaster Artist offers you a pretty good time. No one is having a bigger laugh or enjoying themselves more than the host, but there's fun to be had nonetheless.
Viewed Dec. 8, 2017 -- AMC Sunset 5
2000
That's the sensation that comes with watching The Disaster Artist. The movie it's based on is called The Room, and it's about how a real man named Tommy Wiseau made it with a bizarre, single-minded determination that is simultaneously ridiculed and admired by everyone who sees The Room, which is often considered one of the worst movies ever made.
The Room really is an awful movie, though the truth is it's less of a legitimate attempt to make a film than the result of an amateur who had a lot of money but very little talent and even less experience.
The Disaster Artist is the host of the party for The Room -- and it assumes that if you've RSVP'd, you're good friends with everyone who's showing up. There's a bouncy, insouciant attitude toward the proceedings, which begin with celebrities talking about their love of The Room and the affectionate respect (or is that disrespect?) they have for Wiseau, who has become an object of ironic worship. The on-camera celebrities are names like Kristen Bell, Keegan-Michael Key, Adam Scott and J.J. Abrams, and if those names are of only hazy awareness, that may be your first cue that The Disaster Artist is going to be a little too insiderish for your taste.
I've seen The Room once -- and for the most part, it really is a once-is-enough film, a kind of experience that somehow sears itself into your memory and consciousness, though it is genuinely not good, not interesting and funny only because it is so transcendently bad.
The people who made The Disaster Artist, especially director and star James Franco, have seen it way more than once, and they largely revel in their ability to recreate the film and its multi-hyphenate creator with uncanny perfection.
James Franco and his brother Dave are the two leads of The Disaster Artist, and it's the younger Franco who registers best even though his older brother has the far showier role. James Franco embodies the role of this weird, hulking, disturbing man with both precision and glee. But as the film goes out of its way to say over and over again, Wiseau is a cipher: No one knows who he is, where he's from, why he's rich, how old he is, or whether he's mentally deranged. They just know he exists, and that's all the film seems to know, too.
The Disaster Artist fully expects (as was the case with the people sitting next to me) that his mere presence will elicit chuckles. In Wiseau-speak: He crazy person. He funny and he so weird. But The Disaster Artist doesn't take it much further than that. James Franco is insanely good in the role, but in the way a drag queen is insanely good: The very point is not to know the performer or the character. From a narrative standpoint, that leaves The Disaster Artist a little slack. Tommy Wiseau is Tommy Wiseau, he allows no insight into what moves him and the film offers none.
That's where Dave Franco does the heavy lifting. He plays actor Greg Sestero as a loyal friend, a fool who buys into Wiseau's bizarre dreams, a willing accomplice who enables every bad behavior and lousy idea Wiseau has, at least in part because he's not too smart himself, and in part because he really does admire the way Wiseau can't see his own sheer lack of talent. Dave Franco brings more complexity and nuance to the role than maybe it deserves.
Beyond Dave Franco, the rest of the movie is not too far removed from the other Hollywood in-joke silliness that the Franco Brothers and actor/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have brought to their other bawdy, ironic industry satires like This Is the End and The Interview. The Disaster Artist is a more wholly conceived and fulfilling movie than those, but only slightly.
That's because despite James Franco's surface level impersonation of Wiseau, there is something weirdly admirable about what he accomplished even with something as stupefyingly awful as The Room: He got his movie made. People saw it. They turned it into a cult classic that has (as The Disaster Artist points out) turned a profit. And now someone's made a movie about him.
That's an astonishing degree of success for a failure, and The Disaster Artist knows it. If you're not friends with everyone in the room, you may find this party an insufferable bore -- it's not far different from the Burt Reynolds-Hal Needham comedies of the 1970s when everyone cracked up at each others' jokes and seemed to be having way more fun than the audience. But if you stick it out, you may find that once you figure out who's who and what's what, The Disaster Artist offers you a pretty good time. No one is having a bigger laugh or enjoying themselves more than the host, but there's fun to be had nonetheless.
Viewed Dec. 8, 2017 -- AMC Sunset 5
2000
No comments:
Post a Comment