HA HA LAND

My chief concern walking into “The Disaster Artist” was how the quality of acting was meant to ‘work’. These are some of Hollywood’s better performers playing some of the industry’s worst. Do they do great acting of bad acting? Do they badly act the entire time? Where does the acting that concerns acting begin? It’s this meta-cinema that shadows the film as a whole, flirting with what we know of “The Room” and never knew behind the scenes. Nonetheless, this is a pretty good film about the worst film of all time.

A viewing of Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cinematic catastrophe “The Room” is a non-negotiable prerequisite for “The Disaster Artist”. To appreciate the latter, one must experience the painful (yet hilarious) work from Wiseau; an exemplar of nonsensical writing, sub-par acting chemistry and quite possibly a legendary tale warning against having a director/writer/producer/lead actor combination. Much of the existential questioning that arises from watching “The Room” is ‘Why?’, a postulation that “The Disaster Artist” does its best to answer.

The passion project of director/actor/producer (wait haven’t we seen this before?) James Franco, “The Disaster Artist” provides a deep dive into the mind of Wiseau and the strange climate surrounding the making of the original film. Franco crafts the story of Greg (Dave Franco, ‘DF’ for short-hand’s sake) and Wiseau (James Franco) creating a peculiar but beautiful friendship well, throwing in the ideas of the struggles to be an actor on the East Coast in one of the weirder examinations of the American Dream. DF and Franco have obvious chemistry, and this proves integral to the believability of their on-screen friendship, which proves as the crux of the movie’s plotline and conflicts.

Franco in particular nails the eccentricities of Wiseau, showcasing both the magnetic (albeit weird) charm that seems to power the infallible confidence of the man. But he also manages to highlight the darker side of the artist; the rage, doubt and obsession that both prolongs the making of the “The Room” as well as disintegrates his friendship with Greg. While the performance may have been a touch overhyped by critics going into the premiere, it is still a joy to watch Franco act out a role he worked so hard to bring to the screen (and achieve what Wiseau never could). And with a supporting cast of friends from the Hollywood scene, it is just as hilarious to see Oscar quality actors such as Jacki Weaver take on the awful roles provided in “The Room”.

Which in the end proves as the greatest strength of the film. Seeing the perfect recreations of the “The Room” by Franco, DF et al provides this strange sort of nostalgia for “The Room”. The film’s epilogue that features upwards of 5 or 8 minutes of juxtaposed “The Room” and “The Disaster Artist” re-creations is worth the price of admission alone.

So as much as “The Disaster Artist” is it’s own work, it doesn’t quite escape the all-enveloping power that is “The Room”. While “Disaster Artist” crafts its own great scenes and performances that showcase the complete absurdities that got “The Room” produced, it just can’t be a perfect piece of cinema in its own right. What is does do is re-position an audience’s interpretation of “The Room”, and for this author, it was much like seeing the cult classic as some of demented, upside-down iteration of 2016’s “La La Land”, another work exploring the plights and pilgrimage that come with ‘making it’ in Hollywood. But no doubt we’ll forget all about “La La Land” in ten years time, but there’s no way we forget “The Room”.