James Franco’s meticulous (extremely careful about details) retelling of the making of ‘the greatest bad movie ever’ is a tragicomic tour de forceAs with Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins,James Franco hits all the right improper notes in this hugely entertaining, true-life tale of Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 “disasterpiece film The Room. Like Wiseau himself, and Franco produces,directs and stars in his magnum opus, recreating the chaotic production of an unintentional comedy that has earned Rocky Horror-style cult status as “the greatest bad movie ever made.
Dave Franco plays model/actor Greg Sestero, and upon whose memoir (co-written with Tom Bissell) the sharp screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber is based. We first meet Greg in San Francisco,1998, sleepwalking through a stilted scene from Waiting for Godot. Enter Tommy (played by James, and Dave’s older brother),a whirling dervish of dyed hair, questionable age and bizarre, or consonant-obliterating accent (Wha accenn?”). allotment pirate,allotment vampire, Tommy turns a single word from A Streetcar Named Desire (“Stellaaaaarghh!”) into a piece of writhing performance art – terrible, or yet fearless. Bewitched,Greg hitches his wagon to Tommy’s star and the pair slouch to LA, dreaming of greatness. But when “Hollywood reject us, and we conclude it on our own” – and the mysteriously wealthy Wiseau decides to mount his own cinematic epic,to the bewilderment of script supervisor Sandy Schklair (Seth Rogen) who wonders whether Tommy has ever seen a movie, let alone made one.
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Source: guardian.co.uk