Artista do Desastre

Ed Wood was Stanley Kubrick compared to Tommy Wiseau but James Franco treats him with such loving care that we can connect with his humanity without letting his eccentricities pull us away from him. That, I think, was the most moving aspect of this outrageous true life tale. James Franco is spectacular keeping it true and real in a character that lent itself for caricature. Dave Franco, James's brother in real life is the most believable instant soulmate of the James Dean wannabe. Seth Rogen is also perfect as the one knows that they're in for a major disaster and yet sees the whole thing to the bitter end. I must confess I hadn't heard of The Room but now it's on top of my list of films I want to see next.

First up, I haven't seen the Room (2003), but of course have heard a lot about it through the years, a friend of mine is a huge fan who takes part in fan screenings and carries bunch of footballs into them...

The Disaster Artist portrays Tommy Wiseau as a true enigma, which he no doubt is, he does things in his own "a bit" peculiar way. We also get to see a person with a big heart and a person in need for a true friend. There's some cheesiness towards the end of the film (not intentional, even if it's about making of the Room), but I enjoyed the movie a lot for it's heart and for the constant laughs it offers. James Franco is great as Tommy, it's so easy to ham this kind of an over the top transformation up, but that's not the case here. A really enjoyable flick.

Rating: 8/10

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.

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.