The Disaster Artist

Having been lucky enough to get tickets to the Australian premiere of The Disaster Artist with Greg Sestero himself in attendance, I was excited and eager to watch this amazing story. A comprehensive look at the making of what might be the most perplexing piece of cinema ever. I was not disappointed. James Franco is so spot on in his portrayal of Tommy's quirks and character its actually surreal. His first scene having him enter an acting class with the confidence of a rockstar but the talent of a fingerless piano player. Almost all of his endearingly strange lines had the audience laughing their heads off. I tip my hat to him and hopefully the Oscars come calling. He deserves to be nominated.

That presents a problem as well. He makes Tommy too likeable. While he was humanised to a certain extent and some solid insight was given into his motivations and feelings, it has to be acknowledged the real Tommy was far more obnoxious, manipulative and plain nasty. It was hard to present an accurate portrait of him as James Franco focuses more on his quirks and his charm and his tyrannical side was a bit glossed over. Nonetheless I gave him a pass and still loved watching him. And hey, you can't say Tommy isn't sincere. Other changes were made to the story and some plot points fictionalised, but that's the case in nearly every adaptation so that was to be expected. It did capture the spirit of the story and was never boring or slow paced, though it wouldn't have hurt to be a little longer either. Dave Franco does an excellent job as Greg, playing him a little more naive and optimistic than his real life counterpart (the real Greg knew he was not making a good movie, while this Greg seems a little more deluded.) but like the real Greg was so likeable and warm you just wanted him to succeed.

The film's supporting characters are perfectly cast as well, with Seth Rogen playing a straight man role as Sandy the stunned script supervisor along with several comedians and famous actors popping up left right and centre. The making of the movie is the most enjoyable part and is seriously funny. One of the biggest laughs in the cinema was Josh Hutcherson's first appearance as the room's most peculiar character, Denny, goofy haircut and shirt intact. It was also great to see that Ari Graynor and Jacki Weaver, playing Juliette Danielle's Lisa and Carolyn Minnott's Claudette from the movie respectively, are portrayed as strong willed and thick skinned people who nobly put up with some of the worst working conditions for an actor imaginable. No water or air conditioning combined with gratuitous belly button sex would have probably broken others but they soldiered on.

Overall it's a hilarious and genuinely moving account of an insane true story. It softens the darker edges a bit too much and I would have loved it to have included some even crazier parts of the book that didn't make the cut but what we're left with is still an excellent and enjoyable movie. OH HI MARK!

The Disaster Artist (2017)

*** (out of 4)

Greg (Dave Franco) is a wannabe acting taking part in an acting course when he meets a bizarre man named Tommy (James Franco). Tommy talks the young man into moving to Los Angeles where the two can hopefully live their dreams of becoming actors but things don't work as planned so Tommy comes up with the idea of making his own movie.

James Franco produced, directed as stars as Tommy Wiseau and it's easy to see why he would be so involved with the film. I mean, THE ROOM is just one of those movies that once you see you can never forget it. There are great movies that you watch that you'll never forget but THE ROOM is something completely different. Some have called it one of the worst movies ever made but it is a cult item and it continues to live on whereas some of the "good" movies that were made at the same time have been forgotten.

THE DISASTER ARTIST is a rather interesting film on a number of levels. It does work as a documentary look at the making of the film as well as the relationship between Greg Sestero and Tommy Wiseau but at the same time you learn very little about the man behind the camera. This is actually joked about throughout this movie and to me the film worked best as an acting showcase for James Franco. There's no question that his performance is the reason to watch this movie as he goes all in as the bizarre Wiseau.

What I enjoyed most about the film is that Franco perfectly nails the speech of Wiseau but he also doesn't just mimic the real person but instead delivers a full and rich performance. The actor really is believable in the role and so much so that you can actually believe that you're watching the real Wiseau and not just an actor playing him. Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Jacki Weaver and Seth Rogen all turn in nice supporting performances but there's no doubt that it's Franco who steals the picture.

In all honesty, I'm not sure how much interest this film will have to people who aren't already familiar with THE ROOM. I'd personally recommend that you watch that film before getting into this one. For the most part I thought Franco, the director, did a good job at showing the craziness behind the scenes and how it all ended up on the screen. We might not learn a lot about the character but we at least get an idea of the madness that it took to create THE ROOM.

So yeah, The Room is pretty well-known by now, becoming just about the most popular 'so bad it's good' film of all time over the last six or seven years, as has the story behind it- as detailed in Greg Sestero's book, The Disaster Artist.

So being a fan of both, I had a good idea of what I was in for, approaching the James Franco directed The Disaster Artist, but I'm pleased to say the film ended up meeting my expectations and then some.

First things first: James Franco's performance in this is incredible. His accent and mannerisms are a spot-on imitation of Wiseau's, and he manages to make you feel sympathy towards the character too. It's one thing to so directly portray such a unique individual and make doing so incredibly funny, but it's another thing entirely to make him feel (almost) like a real person, and to make you genuinely care for him. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I truly think this performance is worth an Academy Award nomination (fingers crossed).

Everyone else was good too. Dave Franco had a less flashy role than his brother's, sure, playing Greg Sestero, but he did a good job as the more grounded, 'straight man' type character. And some of the casting was genius too- I could list almost everybody, but special mention should go to Josh Hutcherson, Zac Efron, and Jacki Weaver.

Also worth mentioning is how well the cast and crew recreated the look of the original The Room- the mannerisms of the actors, the set design, the lighting, the camera-work- it's all perfect. It makes the film an impressive technical achievement in many regards; not simply a funny film with inspired casting and good performances.

As for downsides? There aren't a whole bunch. Perhaps the most significant is that this may not have a great deal of appeal beyond those who've watched and loved The Room already. I'm sure it would still function as a good film, but it might lack something for those who aren't already indoctrinated into the cult of The Room. Other nitpicks I could think of may be that the film is fairly conventional in terms of plot- not a ton of surprises here (other than maybe a few cameos throughout). And it feels a tiny bit longer than just over 100 minutes- but again, that's a nitpick. I am more or less struggling to think of too much that I personally didn't like with this film.

So as a long time fan of The Room, this is about as good as I hoped it could be. I hope I'm wrong in my views that the audience for this will be limited, and that it does have appeal beyond hardcore fans of The Room. And hey, if there's enough buzz behind it to allow for James Franco to earn an Oscar nomination, then that would be fantastic.

And deserved (in my opinion).

This is one of the most pleasant surprises of the film year so far, and second only to Tim Burton's Ed Wood in the (admittedly probably non-existent) sub-genre of films about making terrible movies.

If you've ever watched The Room, or even just watched some of its scenes on Youtube, make sure you don't miss this one.

Going into the theater, I was under the impression that this was a silly James Franco and Seth Rogen movie that made fun of The Room, a legendary bad movie. That's not what the Disaster Artist is at all. Instead, it celebrates The Room. It celebrates Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero, their passion, and their pursuit of a dream.

Sure, The Disaster Artist comments on how The Room bombed terribly; it had to acknowledge this. It comments on the utter lack of acting talent that Tommy and Greg possessed; it had to acknowledge this too. But it handles these details with such delicacy and care that I never felt that it was putting down the characters. Actually, it seemed that the film admired them. Even when the world told them to quit, they never gave up on themselves or each other. The message is surprisingly inspiring.

The movie becomes something more than mere mockery because of the way it handles the relationship between Tommy and Greg with such care and affection. The two genuinely liked each other and saw each other in ways that no one else did. Greg certainly did not understand all of Tommy's methods and decisions, but he understood Tommy's good intentions. Establishing this buddy connection is crucial later in the movie.

After Tommy writes The Room and they begin filming, Tommy expresses his idiosyncrasies in full force. While the film crew sees him as a confusing weirdo, we know there's something more. Despite his utter incompetence in directing and acting and all aspects of filmmaking, we still root him. And we still root for Greg, ever the supportive friend. Tommy makes absurd and confounding choices that don't make sense to Greg and they don't make sense to anyone else either. Even one of Tommy's explanations was simply "people do crazy things." Still, Greg remains loyal.

With as strange as Wiseau behaves, capturing his eccentricities would clearly prove challenging. Give James Franco credit for capturing Wiseau's weirdness in character without ever devolving into derisive mockery. Franco captures his gait, stiff shoulders, hunched posture, indeterminable and inconsistent accent, and his laugh. Watching The Room and hearing Tommy Wiseau laugh, I thought that it sounded completely fake. I chalked it up to another instance of poor acting. But after seeing Wiseau in interviews, I realized that it was his real laugh. To him, the laugh wasn't poor acting because that's what he thinks a genuine laugh sounds like.

Seeing and hearing Wiseau behaving as himself explains a lot about his behavior in The Room. He's just an interesting and very unusual guy. His acting and the acting of others in his movie is still atrocious, but it shifts from startlingly and confusingly bad to understandably bad. And more importantly, seeing the real Tommy makes his movie all the more fun.

You don't need to see The Room to enjoy The Disaster Artist. Would it help? Sure. Seeing The Room first makes many of the inside jokes made in The Disaster Artist funnier and gives a clearer sense of how confoundingly weird the movie truly is. Words cannot do it justice. To understand, you have to see The Room for yourself. I recommend seeing both.

Struggling would-be actor Greg (Dave Franco) meets bizarre, mysterious Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) in an acting class, and the two develop an awkward friendship. The eccentric Tommy offers to move to Los Angeles with Greg to kick start their careers, but once there they find little success. However, one day they decide that, if Hollywood won't work with them, they'll just make their own movie, which leads to the production of one of the worst movies of all time, The Room.

The Room slowly developed a cult following after it's very limited release in 2003. By the end of the decade, it had become a cult item on par with Rocky Horror Picture Show, with raucous midnight screenings and the audience reciting dialogue along with the film. The real Greg Sistero, friend and sometime roommate of Tommy Wiseau, wrote a book about the making of the movie, and this film is an adaptation of that book, so it's told from Greg's point of view. The real Wiseau is a very odd, almost cartoonish figure, and James Franco does a terrific job of portraying him, from his bizarre nightclub-vampire look to his indefinable accent. James' real-life brother Dave Franco plays Greg, and he's a bit weaker, but maybe so is Greg. The rest of the cast is rounded out by many familiar faces from the comedy world of the past decade and a half or so, with a few surprises (Is that Sharon Stone and Melanie Griffith?). I have grown to love The Room for the "hilariocity" it is, and thus my appreciation of this behind-the-scenes look at its making may be greater than those who have not or who fail to see that colossal failure's charm. I found this movie funny and endearing. One of that year's best and look ma, no CGI.