The Disaster Artist: A Great Film About a Bad Film
- Hamnah Asif
- Oct 3, 2017
- 2 min read
Directed by James Franco
Starring
James Franco as Tommy Wiseau
Seth Rogen as Sandy Schklair
Dave Franco as Greg Sestero
In case anyone missed it, The Room was a film released in 2003. It starred a man of questionable origin named Tommy Wiseau who also directed, produced and wrote it. The Room is a unique film in that it’s one of those movies that’s so hilariously bad, it’s just hilarious. It’s worth watching for Wiseau’s wacky accent alone.
The Room deserves to be seen because it takes effort to produce a film that confoundingly ludicrous. It’s a Hollywood success story in the strangest sense. If you asked me about the plot, I wouldn’t know what to say. I’d just tell you there’s one particular scene of three men in suits tossing a ball around, making conversation, without giving you context. To be fair, neither does the film.
Co-actor, Greg Sestero, along with Tom Bissell, thought the same and compiled a book chronicling Wiseau’s maddeningly amusing/ ridiculous ideas and the odd, often indecipherable, things he would say.
The movie in question, The Disaster Artist (which deserved this necessary preamble), is based on Sestero’s book. It offers a humorous and insightful look into this borderline historic movie and doesn’t appear to poke cruel fun at Wiseau (of course, that has its place too) but takes time to show the effort that went into the making of his beloved film.
James Franco makes a brilliant Wiseau. He’s funny, enigmatic and has that puzzling accent down to a science. The Disaster Artist also seems to do the notorious “I did not hit her scene” justice. Reportedly that scene, comprising of barely 30 words, had to be shot over and over again because the mystifying Wiseau couldn’t remember his lines. Seth Rogen looks as affable as ever but Franco is definitely the star of the show, simply because he’s having so much fun playing Wiseau while simultaneously portraying him with a full heart and insightful inflections in his speech and manner.
Franco’s sense of cinematic direction also comes through. He makes it feel like an intimate account of a mad spectacular film which, against all odds, triumphed.
This doesn’t look like just some dumb comedy designed to get “fans” of The Room into theatres. It appears to handle its material with tact and a great deal of charm. It’s surprising because it would be easy for it to become mean spirited. In fact, that’s the easier route and the one many people expect it to take. But I believe The Disaster Artist might surprise viewers by offering not just a big laugh but an open hearted and inspiring look at a dream that only Wiseau could see and was ultimately, by some cosmic miracle, realized.
The Disaster Artist is set to release in December 2017.
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