The moment you finish watching Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”, you are forever humbled. Reminded of how truly distorted the world could be. In its earnestness, you can not deny the depth of the endeavour it was meant to overcome. To portray reality as it appears to the man who directed, wrote, and starred in it. It might be the single greatest case for a vision of the mind as translated to the screen. It achieves its own perfection and it is born far from the minds of others, in some cultural desert, in a place that has only heard of such things as “The World”. Other films are consistently trying to capture and recapture the world as we all agree it to be with a flair for the dramatic here, a splash of color there, maybe a gun or two, a sword or three. But maybe that game is rigged. Maybe we truly couldn’t perceive or understand art without the complete opposite. Mr. Wiseau showed us a piece of his heart and we could do nothing but gawk and laugh, wondering aloud, “How did this happen?”. With the release of The Disaster Artist, we are finally able to understand, first hand, that “The Room” isn’t on planet Earth. It’s on Tommy’s Planet. Welcome.

First, a piece of advice. See “The Room” before sitting down for The Disaster Artist. It’s not necessarily required. The Disaster Artist is not a parody, but the true saga of one man’s quest to become everything he wanted to be. It will, however, give you some much needed context to the reason you would ever want to know about Tommy and crew to begin with. In fact, I would say watch it and wait a week. Let Tommy ruminate in your thoughts. Swirl him around like you just mixed the world’s finest red wine with the world’s best whiskey. That being said, the spawn of Judd Apatow’s productions were so moved by the story of Tommy Wiseau, they decided to produce for us the tale as seen through the eyes of his best friend and co-star of “The Room”, Greg Sestero. And while The Disaster Artist doesn’t unwind all the mysteries, conversely it probably perpetuates most them, James Franco was able to star in and direct an entrancing film that actually manages to be a laugh riot while never once telling a joke.

Despite the story being naturally funny (see: Odd), the film still it is able to reach into the pit of your heart and make you feel something. It is as much like any other film based on a true story. It doesn’t take go out of its way to make light of anything. It plays it as straight and earnest as Tommy Wiseau did with “The Room”. The difference being, this takes place on Earth. James Franco is at the top of his game as Tommy Wiseau, and even beyond his immaculate recreation of Wiseau’s eccentricities, you find a self-inflicted tortured soul. James was able to make Tommy seem both grounded and real while also creating the illusion that Tommy isn’t even part of our world, moving in and out of space time or maybe some kind of mirage. It is the source of all the comedy in the film. How could one man be and yet we know he is.

Co-starring is Dave Franco, younger brother to James, as Greg Sestero, characterized as a young man who has yet to find his breath. Greg plays the unwitting caretaker to Tommy under the guise of a new best friend. And because James and Dave are brothers there is an air of familiarity that they don’t even try to pretend isn’t there. It might be the greatest strength to their dynamic. Even when their characters first meet, (follow me here) it plays like they know… that we know…  that they are brothers in real life… playing two real life people who meet to become the biggest joke in cinema… and also maybe brothers themselves. All this to say Dave and James are naturals together. In just so much as miracles happened to produce “The Room”, the same happened so that James and Dave could be born to play the guys who made “The Room”. Miracles come in all forms.  

The rest of the cast is equally as fantastic, but they take up much less of the film. Still, they are the groundwork of the film that keeps it completely stationed on Earth. It has a bit of everyone you come to expect in a comedy from the past 15 years.

I don’t know what more there is to say. This turned out completely different from what I expected. It isn’t a parody, but a genuine film meant to inspire people everywhere. Don’t give up. Even if you have to reach into your bottomless bank account and spend 6 million dollars making the worst film ever made, don’t give up. Even if you have to lie about where you are from, how old you are, who you may or may not have killed, even if you are hit by a car which may be the root cause of all the problems in your life, or your girl betrays you, don’t give up. You might just make history. You might just become a true auteur.

~* Tommy Wiseau/10 *~