The Disaster Artist

It's rare that making a truly terrible movie is celebrated, but director-actor James Franco does just that in this film about Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003). Based on the 2013 nonfiction book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Tom Bissell and Greg Sestero, the story follows Wiseau (Golden Globe winner Franco) and Sestero (Dave Franco, aka James's younger brother), who meet at a San Francisco acting class in 1998. Blandly handsome Greg so admires weird Wiseau's deranged exhibitionism that he suggests they do a scene together. That leads to a friendship/partnership and they move to Los Angeles to become movie stars. After inevitable rejections, delusionary Wiseau writes an incoherent screenplay, spending $6 million on a ludicrous vanity project. Visiting a movie-equipment supplier, Wiseau opts for both 35mm film and high-definition video, insisting on buying the equipment rather than renting it. Realizing Wiseau's guileless ineptitude, the supplier adds in the use of his own studio and professional crew. Director Franco actually recreates about 20 minutes of the absurd awfulness as a movie-within-the-movie. But as told from Sestero's naïve perspective, the anecdotal tale never delves into egocentric Wiseau's mysterious past, including his garbled, vaguely Eastern European accent (or the source of his seemingly unlimited funding). For celebrity spotters, there are cameos by Judd Apatow, Kristen Bell, Bryan Cranston, Zac Efron, Melanie Griffith, Josh Hutcherson, Seth Rogen, and more. Slick, yet also schlocky, this is a muddled cinematic misadventure. Optional. (S. Granger)