We live in quite the funny day and age, don’t we? We’re currently in an era of cinema where there exists the concept of a movie that can be so bad, it’s enjoyable. Now, I can already hear your collective “What?”, and I can explain. While a movie that’s not good at all may not be enjoyable as it is, a lot of people find humor in making a bad movie good by both not taking it seriously and poking fun at it as they watch it. If this concept sounds familiar, you’d be right since YouTube personalities such as the Nostalgia Critic and Adam from YourMovieSucks have become popular faces of this particular brand of content.

Now, allow me to set the stage for what would be known as the best worst movie of all time. In the late 90’s, a man arrived in California by the name of Tommy Wiseau. This would-be legend is of unknown origin, skeptical age (18), and with an unidentifiable accent. He attended an acting class with another guy by the name of Greg Sestro whom he would eventually befriend and go on to produce a film of their own after all other studios reject it. What made Tommy so… different is the way he acts and his somewhat off behavior, all enhanced by his slightly broken English. Our unlikely duo went on to create a film known as The Room, a movie that would live in infamy due to its predictable writing, the acting which is just jarring to say the least, the odd writing and directing, both of which were done by Tommy himself, and above all else, the editing with obvious dubbed in dialogue at some moments. The movie has become specifically well-known due to the widespread appreciation for the unforgettable “Oh hi, Mark.”, “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” and who could forget the questionably dubbed-in “What a story, Mark.”. Again, I know what you may be thinking, how could lines like that be so popular? It’s not the lines that made their coinciding scenes so famous, but it was the delivery. Links to the clips from the movie are attached to the matching quotes, and I HIGHLY encourage you to watch them. It’s moments like these that caused this oddity of a film to take its place as a loved “classic”, though for all the wrong reasons.

That being said, this cinematic curiosity is about a guy named Johnny played, of course, by Tommy and his best friend Mark with, who else in this role, but Greg. Johnny begins having troubles with his fiancé Lisa as she is getting tired of Johnny and cheated on him Mark. While this pretty basic plot line happens, there’s an odd number of subplots filling it and essentially leaving everyone in the audience as confused as the rest of the crew must have been while making the film.

Eventually, Greg made a book entailing his experience making the movie with Tommy and how the two of them met: The Disaster Artist. Fast-forward to a year or two ago and James Franco and his brother contacted Tommy and Greg about making a movie all about the book and their time creating The Room. The movie was dubbed the exact same title as the book, and from there, it’s all history. I have to say, James couldn’t be more convincing as Tommy. From his speech patterns to his mannerisms and method of thinking, it’s all been shown with a striking amount of care and detail which is commendable to say the least since he wanted to do this with respect and honor to the minds behind the film. He was so good with the role that Tommy himself actually said that he was “99.99%” perfect.

To conclude, I’m just going to say that while it’s incredibly difficult to find a theater that actually shows this movie since it had such a limited release with so high of a demand, I’m sure it’ll be out for distribution soon enough. Until then, I urge you to watch the trailers for it and there was one interview in particular that had me laughing way too hard where James Franco read video game quotes in-role as Tommy.