The Metropolis

Reviewed: "The Room" at the Prince Charles Cinema. A monthly chance to see the worst film ever made

Anya Pearson | Wednesday 14 March, 2012 15:59

It’s a few minutes to midnight at the Prince Charles Cinema, and the train crash that is ‘The Room’, dubbed the Citizen Kane of bad movies, is pulling away from the station. Allegedly costing $6 million to make, star and Director Tommy Wiseau clearly intended for his melodramatic yarn about a love triangle set San Francisco to be taken seriously. However, its release in 2003 left most audience members so appalled that they demanded their money back within 30 minutes.

Since then, cinema-goers with a more finely-tuned sense of irony have metamorphosed this resolutely crappy drama into a black comedy of the “so bad its good” variety – developing a game to play throughout the film, which essentially involved shouting abuse following on-screen prompts and cues. It’s one hell of a ride – just don’t expect to be able to hear the film’s dialogue over the participative chaos.

The Prince Charles hosts monthly screenings of film but the reason for this particularly raucous midnight spectacular is that the man himself is there to open it. With a lime green tie, mirrored sunglasses and gothic Bon Jovi hair, Wiseau is busy sharing some dubiously phrased words of wisdom with his enraptured audience. “Let me educate you something”, he slurs down the mic, “Two is great… but three’s a crowd!” The sold-out venue erupts with cheering and a few dozen plastic spoons are hurled in his direction for good measure. Before the show starts, he has some final words of advice: “You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself – but please, don’t hurt each other!”

Wiseau plays Johnny (though his co-stars do accidentally call him Tommy on occasion), a successful banker who seems to spend most of his time having incidental sex with his fiancée Lisa. Cue a whole cheeseboard of schmaltzy R&B on the soundtrack. Many in the audience start holding their illuminated phones and lighters in the air and sway to the music like Year Sevens at a Justin Beiber gig. “You’re doing it wrong!” somebody shouts a few aisles down from me. It’s true – Tommy’s (Sorry, Johnny’s) dimpled ex-bodybuilder buttocks are a good few inches lower than is physically feasible, and as the camera slips drunkenly in and out of focus, a few on the back row groan in unison: “Nooo! Soft focus!”

During the course of the screening, plastic spoons become a much-coveted currency with people scrabbling for them on the popcorned carpet so they can pelt them at the screen whenever a picture of the innocuous piece of cutlery appears in the background. It should be symbolic, except that it clearly isn’t. During the birthday party scene, a group near the front of the cinema release multicoloured balloons amidst cheers and whoops, while onscreen Johnny deadpans with glazed eyes: “Thank you honey, this is a beautiful party! You invited all my friends. Good thinking!”

In case anyone is still following it, the plot meanders past a mixture of well-trodden Hollywood plot devices and strangely perplexing cul-de-sacs. Just why was Lisa’s evil anti-feminist mother diagnosed with breast cancer, never to be mentioned again? What kind of drugs was Johnny’s doting semi-adopted street urchin Denny taking? Who is Chris-R? Who cares? Boggy subplots aside, when our hero finds out that Lisa has been sullying the name of R&B with Johnny’s best friend Mark, you can bet the audience shares his pain as he hops from one fantastically wonky cliché to the next. “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” we all holler in anguish in vaguely Eastern European accents. “Everybody betray me. I’m fedda up of this world!”

The final scene, where Johnny appears to simulate having sex with Lisa’s discarded red dress before shooting himself in the mouth, is like a Greek tragedy written by someone with all the imagination of a packet of Feta cheese. As blood gushes from Johnny’s temples, Lisa and Mark run to his still-warm corpse. “C’mon, Johnny! Wake up!” we cry together with the adulterous pair, before Mark solemnly confirms: “He’s dead”. Beneath the sarcasm, mockery and feigned contempt we’re all secretly very, very sad it’s over.

The next screening of The Room is at the Prince Charles Cinema on Thursday 22nd March 2012. 7 Leicester Place, London WC2H 7BY

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