The Room
by Tommy Wiseau
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DVD details
Actor: Carolyn Minnott, Greg Sestero, Juliette Danielle, Philip Haldiman, Tommy WiseauDirector: Tommy Wiseau
DVD: Region Code 1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Digital Sound, Dolby, Full length, NTSC, Subtitled, Surround Sound, Widescreen
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-12-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Wiseau-Films
DVD Reviews of The Room
DVD Review: The best DVD of all time.
Summary: 5 Stars
Tommy Wiseau's disasterpiece "The Room" is one of the most memorable films ever made. Tommy Wiseau's confused direction, insipid acting and idiotic writing all combine to create the greatest accidental comedy of all time, but chances are that you already know plenty about the film. My intention is to solely review this DVD, which I feel does not get enough recognition as being nearly as hilarious as the film itself.
First of all, when the DVD starts, there are no introduction videos for any of the companies involved with the film, it just jumps straight to the menu, which has many peculiarities.
The Room has an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (1.78 times wider than its height), otherwise known as 16:9 or Widescreen. However, it's clear that Tommy Wiseau cannot stick to one aspect ratio. The dvd is mastered in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio (as indicated by the back of the box and seen by playing the film on my widescreen television), but for some reason, all of the menus (which have this hilariously bad green color-graded background of Tommy Wiseau) are in 1.33:1, or 4:3/fullscreen. This is annoying because the image is then pillar boxed on widescreen TVs (black bars on the sides of the image.) I have nothing against the 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio and I watch several 1.33 films on my TV, which are all pillar-boxed. However, the menus on this disc still annoy me because the DVD is mastered in 1.78:1, not 1.33:1. If the DVD is mastered in 1.78:1, the menus should also be in 1.33:1.
But this is not the only example of Tommy Wiseau mishandling the aspect ratios for his content. The extras (which are all B-Movie gold) are all filmed in 1.78:1 with the exception of the Behind-the-scenes documentary. However, on several of them (including a laughably contrived interview), he letterboxes (black bars on the top and bottom of the image) the 1.78:1 to fit into a 1.:33:1 image in which he edited the 1.78:1 footage. However, as I said, the DVD is mastered in 1.78:1, not 1.33:1. The only time you ever need to letterbox a 1.78:1 image is when the image is being played on a screen with an aspect ratio taller than 1.78:1. However, the DVD is exactly 1.78:1, so the letterboxing is not needed in any way. As a result of Tommy Wiseau's idiocy, the widescreen extras are surrounded by black when they fit the screen perfectly. Something tells me that Tommy Wiseau knows nothing about editing video.
The extras on the disc, while somewhat limited, are worth buying the dvd for, even if just to laugh at them. The DVD comes with Two trailers (a long one and a short one), Deleted scenes (which are actually one very poorly edited deleted scene infected by extreme continuity errors and unnecessary letterboxing), an interview with Tommy Wiseau (yet again unnecessarily letterboxed), a fly-on-the-wall Behind the Scenes documentary and a Still Photo Gallery.
The two trailers expertly display Tommy Wiseau's failed attempts to pass the film off as a quirky black comedy. The greatest error in both trailers is the inclusion of the tagline "A drama with the passion of Tennessee Williams" and the quote "Experience this quirky new black comedy, it's a riot." Anyone with a limited knowledge of Tennessee Williams will understand the faults of including both of these quotes.
Tennessee Williams was a brilliant playwright who wrote some of the most engaging, intense and claustrophobic stage-dramas ever performed. Let me stress the fact that these plays were extremely intense, because they put you on the very edge of your seat with their dialog heavy and character driven stories. In fact, arguably his two masterworks, "Street Car Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" were both committed to great films. Tennessee Williams famous works are not in any way comedic. Some of them contain comedic moments, but for the most part, they were terribly serious. It simply does not work to state a black comedy has the dramatic attributes of Tennessee Williams. It's yet another example of how Tommy Wiseau's failed attempts to pass the film off as a black comedy despite it's obvious intentions to be a serious character driven drama, very much in the style of Williams. In fact, any fan of William's work will see the influences he had on Tommy. For example, both "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and this film attempt to tell the story and build the character relationships through exposition, they both lead up to an explosive last act and they both deal with a faulty relationship. However, Tommy Wiseau does not effectively use the time he spends toward telling the story through exposition and fails to communicate the story in a way that the audience can relate to.
Moving on with the extras, the deleted scene (there is only one deleted scene included), an alternate version of the interaction between Denny and Chris-R, is even worse than any portion of the film. For one thing, the cinematographic style is very different than that of the scenes which made it into the film. There are very few cuts and the camera moves back and forth haphazardly along a dolly-track for most of the scene and the scene is in the same place that Johnny, Mark, Denny and Mike play football, except there is a basketball hoop added to the set. The dialog is slightly different (including a hilarious addition of Denny trying to buy time by baiting Chris-R to play horse with him). The editing is very poor and fails to edit out the scene preparation at the beginning and end of the scene.
Also included on the disc is a contrived and poorly conducted interview of Tommy Wiseau, obviously done by Greg Sestero, who played Mark. Judging by the contrived nature of the questions and their answers, it was clear Tommy Wiseau had an agenda to dismiss the severe critical dislike of his film. In fact, in one question, he directly addresses people who dislike the film. It's really something you should see for yourself, so I will talk about it no more.
There is an entire 30-minute documentary sans narration made up of randomly assembled footage of the production and a very small interview of Carolyn Minnot, the actress for Claudette. It's also worth watching to see how everything went wrong throughout, so I wont spoil anymore.
Finally including are two poor still photo galleries, including poor and unnecessary stills from the film and a few of the film's production. This portion is really not worth watching, so I wont really discuss it.
Overall, if you want the film and are curious about the extras, I highly recommend this dvd.
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