In the wake of the excellent Disaster Artist, it seems our
old friend Tommy Wiseau, teaming up once more with Greg Sistero, has returned
to gift us with another awkward college of bizarrely-enunciated excellence.
That brings us to Best F(r)iends—15 years since The Room, it’s going to be
interesting to see how far both of them have come. I got to see a not fully
finished preview cut of the film, complete with Tommy and Greg in person to
kick things off. Is it another modern classic, possibly for all the wrong
reasons, or do I want it to get aout, get aout, get aout of mai laif?
Well for one the cinematography has evolved considerably
since The Room’s unnecessary greenscreens and soap opera sets, that much is
clear off the bat. Justin MacGregor directs this time, and things range from
actually fairly impressive drone shots of the Los Angeles skyline, to bizarre
and inexplicable ‘artsy’ slow-motion shots that change to greyscale. Yep, it’s
still a Wiseau film—and while unfortunately it doesn’t have the hilarious
titles of The Room nor comically fake rooftops, there’s at least some genuinely
pretty stuff to look at.
The plot has more of the awkwardness that you would expect,
though at least it’s a plot this time. Greg plays a drifter named Jon, a
drifter moving along the highways of LA, getting his face punched in for no
reason by random generic thugs who hate him for…I dunno, being played by a
Franco brother? Anyway, before long he stumbles into the yard of Harvey, a
kooky mortician played by everyone’s favorite long-haired
Cajun-Polish-Andromedan. Tommy’s somewhat more self-aware of his acting
‘talent’ (in the same way that Shatner’s toupee has talent), and plays it up
for a character that’s meant to be outright demented this time around. And if
the draw of The Room was that, you’ll certainly get a kick out of Harvey.
Harvey, it seems, makes a business from embellishing dead
bodies for reasons that are as incomprehensible as only Tommy Wiseau can make
‘em, as well as harvesting bags of gold teeth. Jon soon ends up pilfering some
of these, soon convincing Harvey to turn it into a moneymaking business—that
apparently involves meetings with mafia-like dentists and secret drops across
southern California. Between all this, there’s road trips to Los Angeles that
don’t seem to serve much beyond some nice shots of the Nevada desert—and this
all adds to the off-kilter feel the room has. There definitely seems to be some incorporations of certain events detailed in The Disaster Artist, from young Sistero being taken under the wing of a goth-haired weirdo to the tensions that arise between them over how to take their business--though this all goes out of the window by the end.
It’s not as hilarious as The Room, but is something, and the
weirdness does compel you to keep watching, somewhat. But what is as
unintentionally hilarious as ‘The Room’ is Jon’s ‘romance’ with a random
bartender he picks up—and yes, it’s the sort of ‘romance’ that George Lucas would
be embarrassed by. That’s the sort of Tommy Wiseau production we want here. And yes, there is a ball scene.
Things pick up near the end as we get some more insight into
Harvey and distrust forms between the two people—this is where Tommy’s ‘style’
of acting does actually come into play somewhat, presenting his demented self
in a fairly chilling way. It all ties into a ‘dramatic’ confrontation on a
cliffside that’ll have you in stitches—though, somewhat disappointingly, it all
ties into a volume II that seems to be where the real insanity starts.
Aficionados of The Room will know that one of the random ideas Tommy had for
that was for his character to spontaneously turn out to be a vampire—and let’s
just say that sort of Id might be let loose next time.
So, is it a ‘classic’ like The Room? Eh, not quite. Parts of
it are a bit boring, and while the improved camerawork can be nice, it does
clash with the later classic incompetence we’ve come to expect. Perhaps this is
part of me seeing a not yet finished cut, but that’s what I got out of that
yet. If you need your Tommy fix, this’ll provide, though others might just find
it a bizarre bad acting compilation. I’ll get back to this one when I can see
volume II and a completed edition—for now, at least, it’s not completely
tearink me apart…
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