The Neighbors

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".

With "The Neighbors" you get exactly what you're expecting from a Tommy Wiseau project: terrible acting and dialog, completely nonsensical interactions, bad direction, lighting and staging... the whole nine yards.

Unfortunately you also get characters that seem like walking talking racial and gender stereotypes straight out of 1996. In particular the black characters almost seem to exist to be offensive. If this is Tommy's idea of what black people are like inside his warped mind, he's not the harmless buffoon everyone seems to think they love.

Women are inexplicably running around in micro bikinis, women call each other dirty hos and sluts for no reason... the entire thing would be more offensive if it wasn't so incompetent.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this crap and just go watch "The Room" again.

The show seems like it has a lot of improvisation from all parties involved - and it was ingenious for TW to allow that to happen. His uncorrupted artistic vision, if his interviews are anything to go by, would leave us with such such a bizarre and incoherent universe that it would just end up alienating the audience in all its absurdity. Neighbors isn't alienating. It isn't even this so-bad-is- good thing that is funny in being an earnest attempt that ends up in failure. It's actually charming in the way that an "odd neighbors" sitcom is supposed to be - as an invitation to embrace the other in its radical alterity. Yet the method by which it achieves its charm is completely groundbreaking.

We never take the characters seriously, in fact, we can't take the characters seriously. They are nonsensical caricatures conceived by a mind that is half Kafka, half Z-grade friends. Suspension of disbelief is impossible. Instead, one is constantly aware that everyone is acting. The series finds its charm in the fact that the characters come across as real people, people playing around with their nonsensical roles, experimenting with what they are given, interacting with and giving depth and order to TW's weirdness - in a sincere, positive, light hearted and friendly way.

To exemplify this, let's compare the dynamic between The Room's actors and TW. After the release of The Room, many of the actors came out attempting to clear their name from having participated in such a film. They even attempted to fund a mockumentary where the director, herself an actress in The Room, confesses her shame, distances herself from the film, and admits, in a willy nilly way, that someone else convinced her to finally embrace the fact that, god forbid, she was part of an awful film. This contempt, resentment, and attempt to create distance between the "crazy" director and the "normal" actor is distasteful because while TW inspires sympathy, most agree that polished, spoiled L.A. youth doesn't. Unlike the manufactured, bland perfection of every aspiring actor, TW's weirdness is overflowing with a depth of subjectivity that makes us feel empathy. Foreign, old, attempting and failing at being understood by a culture he idolizes. He possesses a naive, child-like and earnest idealism about America and its iconography of the kind that is only available to people that have endured much harsher realities. To be mean to TW is cruel and inhumane.

We find the opposite of this "I'm not with the weird guy" dynamic in Neighbors. One finds that the actors are actually attempting, through their own performances, to enrich and create value in TW's universe. As an example, Roenfeldt injects condescension and sarcasm into her good wife role, adding a layer of depth to her character and her dynamic with TW. Everyone in the show appears to be experimenting, bringing something in and collaborating, having fun, and not taking themselves seriously. It is this aura of a playful environment, where actors are free to create and improvise, but rarely appear to do so in a mean spirited way, that gives this show its distinctive charm. It feels like a dialogue where folks we can relate to attempt to create a meaningful and engaging piece of art with someone that, to a lot of people, is completely enigmatic, nonsensical, and not even worthy of serious engagement. The cast constantly attempts to create meaning and familiarity in this absurd universe, with this radical otherness that is TW - it comes across as an act of empathy and solidarity. Not through characters, but through the actual people playing them that we, the audience, are irremediably conscious of. Neighbors is, no doubt, one of the most formally and morally interesting shows I've seen in years.

A fever dream inside the mind of an emotionally unstable rodeo clown addicted to huffing gas, this show has it all. Chickens, princesses, bikinis, basketballs, fantasies about neighbors, inappropriately holding shotguns, and high strung stoner, this show will not disappoint. The only show to make Friends look believable.

The long promised (threatened?) television sitcom "The Neighbors" from Tommy Wiseau, the man behind "The Room" has finally arrived on Hulu Plus.

There are simply no words in the English -- or any other --language to describe this series. Alternately hilarious and bizarre, I guarantee you will sit in front of the television set slack-jawed as this one of a kind show unfolds before you. Filled with weird characters (crazy lady who lives with a chicken, women who always wears a bikini, Tommy Wiseau himself playing two characters each with a more ridiculous wig), inane running jokes and outrageous dialog, this is everything you could have hoped for from the mastermind of "The Room" and even more.

The sitcom follows a large group of people who live in an apartment complex. The main character is the building's manager Charlie (played by Wiseau), and each episode something new happens that the cast reacts to. After every scene, there is a stock shot of the apartment building with odd techno music that might have subliminal messages in it because I defy you to not be humming it after the fourth or fifth time it shows up in the half-hour. And keep a lookout for the official "Tommy Wiseau Underwear" that several cast members wear and show off!!

If you enjoyed "The Room" -- or even if you didn't -- then do not hesitate one second to watch this series.