Best F(r)iends: Volume 1

It was ok. nothing really great about it or as memorable as the room. the best parts of the movie were the room references. they were very crafty and well placed. after that it was pretty blah. the production and acting were a little better but the plot lacked and i almost dozed off a few times. greg is definitely a talented guy but i really feel like he should let tommy write the scripts moving forward.

Sooooo....let's just be honest. This is an average film. There are some cool ideas in this film and some good shots, but let's not fool ourselves. Anything Greg Sestero does will be compared to The Room, and so anything he does will be infinitely better. The case in point was Best F(r)iends. And honestly, I love this freaking title. It's low key kinda genius.

The story starts with Sestero being down on his luck as a homeless man in Los Angeles named Jon. A chance encounter with a strange man (expertly played by Tommy Wiseau) leads Jon into a strange underground of gold selling. You see, at least according to Sestero, there was a group of men that used a mortician to steal the old gold fillings of dead people. This happened during the recession of 2009 where gold skyrocketed in value. Anyway, Jon strikes a bizarre friendship with Harvey (Wiseau) as they start working together at the mortuary. Jon ultimately finds out Harvey has hundreds of teeth with gold fillings and talks Harvey into going into business with him, selling the gold on the black market and making some extra cash. All is going well until an obvious thing happens...a super hot girl gets between them.

We all know how this turns out. Harvey gets suspicious of the new girl Traci. You see Harvey is withholding some of the profits from Jon and Traci starts planting ideas in Jon's head that he is being cheated. It makes it even weirder that Harvey is hiding the excess funds in an ATM in his garage. So they hatch a plan to get rid of Harvey and it inexplicably works, making it look like Harvey committed suicide while the couple runs off with the ATM/safe.

The film is pretty basic in its make-up, but it is a fine showcase for Sestero. He has embraced his cult status as a D-list actor and while Best F(r)iends is not a masterpiece, it is also not a complete waste of time. I also liked the fact he specifically made the Harvey character a mirror of real life Wiseau, giving him a vehicle where he is not the butt of a joke but an actual participant in a film. I mean, this movie will be forgotten in the annals of history but if you like The Room and anything associated with it, then check this one out.

Some of this is great, especially Wiseau's gonzo,crazy performance, but some of the rest is utter crap, Sister's awkward performance & the pretentious shooting. So it's hard to pin down because it can be entertaining and boring, captivating and infuriating. In a way it tries too hard , but fails too far. See it anyway.

I am well versed in the story of the Room and Greg Sestero's acting journey. I think it is fantastic that he not only has kept his acting dream from being completely extinguished by his association with the mother of all bad movies The Room, but managed to write and act in a gem that will hopefully open up the doors to him that seemed closed permanently.

It is difficult to categorise this movie into a genre. It's funny, strange, scary and silly, frequently all at the same time. If you don't know much about the plot, it makes the experience far richer, the surprises are half the fun. Greg is very good, but his reluctant life partner Tommy Wiseau is, believe it or not, actually quite good as well. I have a feeling they didn't let him go full on tyrant on this set and let him run completely amok like he did back in '03. He more or less plays a version of himself, or at least similar to how Greg describes him in the disaster artist, and is a compelling guy to watch, despite looking like dawn of the dead at whatever his age is.

The production value is good. The dialogue wasn't dubbed back in. I couldn't see any green screen rooftops and the dialogue is strange at time but not exactly "Oh Hi Mark" strange if you get my drift. Even if you know absolutely nothing about the story of these 2 men and just watch this movie like any other, you will still probably enjoy it. It's never boring or repetitive. In short, it looks pretty darn good.

If you really are sick of movies, even the good ones, that follow a very recognisable formula and want something truly unique and unpredictable then this is for you. It left me scratching my head, wondering exactly what it was. That is the highest compliment I can pay to a movie. In the words of harmony Korine "Please just give me something different."

Best Friends is about as different as Transformers is the same.

This film is nuts. It starts off slowly. Jon (played by Greg "O hai Mark" Sestero) is a drifter who stumbles upon Harvey (Tommy "I'm fed up with this wurld" Wiseau). Harvey gives him a job for a day. The next day Jon comes back to Harvey for a full-time job. Little does Harvey know that Jon is going to betray him by selling bags of Harvey's gold teeth. What a story Mark (I mean Jon).

I saw the UK premiere of the extended cut and the audience was going crazy. There were a few references to The Room and whenever they happened the audience applauded with frenzy. It's not The Room, and I'm not going to compare them as others will do this. I will say that if you want an entirely unique viewing experience which will make you laugh at the poor/legendary acting and scratch your head with bewilderment, this is the film.

Best Friends is very good, and it is very bad, so it's impossible to give it a legitimate score with the usual ranking system. As stupid as this sounds, it's true, so I'll be interested how critics approach Best Friends on it's release.

The 9/10 is for the experience I had while watching it. It really is awesome to see Tommy and Greg acting again opposite each other, so this should not be missed.