Bad Roomies

Bad Roomies is far from a terrible, or even a bad film. It managed to spark some laughter, and keep me mildly entertained for it's rather slim running time.

However, after watching it, I didn't really feel the satisfaction one should after watching a great comedy.

It's a shame, because everything seems to be there. You have Annie Monroe playing a very likable leading lady with a deviant streak, Tommy Savas playing a typical nice guy, and even Patrick Renna delivers a good performance, albeit of an unlikable character.

Despite these things, the film manages to fall flat. In my opinion this is due to the lack of any meaningful character development, in addition to a rather unfocused plot that doesn't really go anywhere. The potential for a laugh out loud comedy with an intriguing plot was there, but unfortunately the film doesn't really take advantage of that potential.

However, that doesn't make Bad Roomies a bad film, per se. It's a half-decent dark comedy that's worth a watch. The only issue is you might find yourself wanting more throughout.

6/10.

A comedy about two friends who have to find a replacement roommate to help with the bills. They have difficulty finding a suitable applicant until they decide to choose a woman. They feel this will be better. Things are awesome at first, and they soon end up in a drunken threesome. Shortly after, tensions are created, leaving the guys plotting on how to get her out of the house. Soon its an all out war leaving no holds barred.

This was a laugh out loud kind of funny. It stars Patrick Renna who you probably remember as the funny looking kid in The Sandlot (1993) and most recently in Fear Inc. (2016). He does deadpan sarcasm well. The other actors do an amazing job as well. The film does show you how every man's dream living arrangement could become a nightmare.

If you're looking for a light-hearted fun comedy that you won't have to think too much about, this is not it. It's not Neighbors or an Adam Sandler film or something like that. It's more of a clever dark comedy. The film makers wanted to make more than just a mindless film, and I really appreciate the attempt.

Now each scene separate to me is actually well written and well acted, and if I had seen them like that instead of as one continuous film, I would have laughed my butt off and been pretty entertained. But that's the thing. The movie feels like the writers wrote each scene separate and then strung them all together without much thought to how the pieces fit, leaving a lot of things (like the way the characters acted, the random things that happened, etc.) very inconsistent and sacrificing a potentially solid story. And by the end, I'm left thinking, "Oh this could have been so awesome man!" But nope :/.

Aside from how the scenes are put together, there are things about the premise of the film really don't make sense, like how the roommates own the beautiful house without either of them seeming like they earn enough $$ (and I think this film would've worked even better if it was in a normal apartment), how they are even best friends (the crazy psycho paranoiac entitled brat guy vs the normal nice chill guy - to me, in the real world, the only way that would work is if the nice guy had amnesia every minute or felt sorry for the guy and was friends with him out of pity, neither of which the film puts him out to be), why the girl attempted to seduce both of them when she clearly just liked one of them, etc.

And then there's the twisted moral code of the film that makes it seem like the girl roommate (Chloe) was actually in the wrong when she didn't really do anything wrong, and that what the guys were doing back at her was totally fine in this harmless game of playing fire with fire when really, it was incredibly childish and pretty sick sh*t.

All in all, this film had such awesome potential but wasn't given enough time to reach that potential, so yeah. I wish it did. It's not a good clever comedy nor is it a fun mindless film, which makes it kind of pointless to watch. But anyways, it's not horrible, and I think everybody deserves some credit, and I don't think you'd regret it too much if you watched it, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing all the people involved grow to make better films.

I often can't understand why some movies get such low reviews when the movie is a story being told as fiction. I think people to often judge a movie by how they think it compares to real life. A good movie is simply a movie that entertains, if it's far fetched and has holes, that doesn't mean it a lousy movie. Bad Roomies is just a crazy story that gets out of hand. How is it any different to something like There's something about Mary? Maybe the acting was better, maybe not, but both movies used an outrageous series of circumstances to get to the end. The three stooges, and Abbot and Costello were even more outrageous and had more holes than a stop sign in Kentucky, but they get high marks? Bad Roomies does exactly what such a movie hopes to achieve, a story that is funny in whatever way, and gets to the end in its own amusing way. It's not Gone with the Wind, and it never intended to be another Gone with the Wind.

I started this movie, thinking it would be a classic raunchy/semi-satirical comedy of 21st century. I was quickly proved wrong. Overall, I give "Bad Roomies" a 3 out of 10 star rating. This film started out funny, I'll admit. A lot of the jokes were funny, the stuff they did was comical, and a lot of the lines were very well/cleverly-written. The cinematography was also pretty dang good; it was shot very well, with a good usage of natural lighting. Then, the movie got confusing. Then, stupid. Then, in the second half of the film, everything was very confusing, weird, and kind of stupid. I did not enjoy this movie very much overall; it was a WASTE OF TIME and I really don't understand other watchers of this movie that say it was any good.