The Neighbors

After watching this I managed to recover from the sofa and realise that I'm not doing that bad in life if stuff like this is managing to pass through production companies and make it on streaming sites let alone the internet itself. I saw the earlier trailers of this show and it was way better than what they made here. I dunno if it is intentionally bad but it's truly a marvel. Everything is a disaster, acting, blocking, camera operating and exposure, sound editing and recording, colour grading and lighting, I think I could go on with this list to carry on explaining what is so wrong. I like to imagine that this is a satire of porn acting but done on an actual multi-episode release. It's truly memorable and a must watch for any filmmaker to criticise rather than enjoy.

To be fair, it made me and my girlfriend continuously laugh. Watch it and take it in!

Ugly, monstrous, revolting, racist, execrable, incomprehensible, inept, incompetent, incomprehensible, incoherent, unwatchable. This show looks like '80s video porn without the sex. The audio sounds like nails on a blackboard. The actors apparently had to go slumming after California's condom law was passed. No one in this show goes unscathed. I never saw "The Room", but I knew going in "The Neighbors" was going to be bad. It is beyond bad. It is an abomination. It is a thing that should not be. This is NOT one of those inept things that is entertaining in spite of itself. It is the most unpleasant thing you will ever see. This cannot be overstated. Do not watch.

There's a way to a make a bad movie and make it enjoyable in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. And that's to hire incompetent people for everything and then have the bad actors give it their all. It's been done so often most notably with Tommy Wiseau's first movie, "The Room". It's been called the "Citizen Kane" of bad movies and that's a title that genuinely fits. Everything about that movie is wrong but out of it grew this incredible movie that really needs to be seen to be believed. Tommy intended this to be a serious drama but because he heard people were laughing at all the serious moments, he decided to change his tune and say it was always intended as a black comedy. He even wrote that as the tagline for it.

But this comes with a problem. People expected badness from Tommy so that's what he gave them but you can't do the same thing on purpose. It has the stink of artifice on it. What was charming in the first movie becomes painfully obvious in everything he does afterwards. Look at the original "Birdemic". Then look at the sequel. The actors are in on the joke and it shows. What made the original so great is the bad everything. What made the second so bad is they tried to imitate the first one. And that's where we are with "The Neighbors".

The actors, including Tommy, are intentionally giving a bad performance. They're overacting because that worked in "The Room". But now you see them deliberately trying to do poorly. It's no longer "so bad it's good". It's "so bad because it's bad".

Let's start off frank and honest, because I don't want my excellent score of 10 out of 10 to be misleading for the casual IMDb reader. This is most certainly not a perfect 10 when it comes to quality. In fact, quite the opposite. This is an incompetent, inept, amateurish mess, boasting a completely lack of focus and talent in front of and behind the camera. A cheap, no-budget train-wreck of proportions best described as epic in scope, dragged down virtually every minute but a laundry-list of faults, including...

-Story lines that are nonsensical and lack any form or structure. A- plots often go without proper establishment and are hastily brought up and sort-of "resolved" during the final moments of an episode. Sub- plots are casually introduced without any set-up and then hastily dropped without resolution.

-Characters are paper-thin clichéd archetypes we've seen before. Characters personify negative racial or gender stereotypes that are meant to be "idenfiable", but come off as mean-spirited parodies of themselves.

-Production values are on the same level as a first-year film student's, with cheap image quality and jarring camera-work, combined with terrible audio-mixing and boring stock-music that is replayed over and over again.

-The so-called acting is laughable and atrocious. Performers akin to cardboard cut-outs who punctuate their dialog with seemingly random emphasis and screaming for their big "dramatic lines."

-Abysmal editing with no regard for flow or continuity, leading to blatant errors including characters and objects frequently disappearing or moving large distances between shots, or angle-changes so drastic they give the viewing a sense of stylistic whiplash.

-And it's impossible to tell if the show is honestly "that bad" on its own, or merely absurd self-parody that attempts to come off as "that bad." It's just so terrible, you can't help but think they're trying purpose to be terrible... yet you have the lingering feeling that this might be an honest effort that is simply crumbling apart due to a lack of thought and reason behind-the-scenes.

So why am I giving it a perfect 10?

Entertainment value, entertainment value, entertainment value!

You see, this series is the newest work from the almost mythological figure in film known as Tommy Wiseau- a strange being who clearly loves life, loves cinema and loves entertainment, yet can't wrap his mind around how to create quality work himself.

He is of course best known for his cinematic blunder/achievement "The Room"- an independent drama film that became notorious for it's nonsensical script, bizarre sense of direction and so-bad-it's-good style. And it has gone on to become a celebrated cult phenomenon- a sort-of modern-day "Rocky Horror Picture Show" with fans around the world who gather for screenings and eat up every scene in all its furiously confusing glory.

And this very much does feel like a "Tommy Wiseau Production" worthy of the same cult-status as that glorious film. "The Neighbors" is essentially on the same sort-of storytelling plane as "The Room", merely lacking the surprisingly high production-value and experience crew of that film, instead being traded in for a shoestring budget. Which frankly, makes it all the more entertaining.

This is one of those "perfect storms" of awfulness. In its handful of episodes, it provides enough comedic fodder and hilarious (and unintentional) laughs to be an ideal viewing choices for groups of friends who want to sit back and behold a spectacle of badness.

It has become our new go-to for movie-nights, and we have already watched the series (thus far) several times, each time enjoying it more and more.

For "so bad, it's good" entertainment value, this easily earns a perfect 10, and is well-worth checking out for fans of such films and series. Particularly those already familiar with Wiseu's "The Room."

Funny, well written and full of classic wiseau moments.