There was a documentary aired on British TV a couple of years ago about the late great comedian Les Dawson that I was reminded of by The Room.

One of the key features of Dawson's act was that, for comedy effect, he would play the piano deliberately badly. Not just by hitting keys randomly - the tune was correct, but the tone was all wrong. Here's a sample.

In that documentary, it was claimed by one of the talking heads that playing the piano deliberately badly that adeptly was far more difficult to do than to actually play the tunes properly, and they then went on to claim that Dawson was a genius for being able to master it. It's…

If you have not watched The Room, drop everything that you are doing and watch it now... but first, read this review. I will keep this review short to get you to watch it right away. This is a totally spoiler free review, because to spoil this movie would be comparable to spoiling the fruit of the gods.

The Room is a modern masterpiece. That is a fact. Not an opinion, a fact. You know when a movie just immediately feels like a masterpiece? You've felt that with Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, and now, The Room. Actually, it might be even better than those movies. Forget the sled or the horse head, this movie has the ball…

We believe that idiosyncratic auteur Tommy Wiseau is an alien. Hear us out. How else could he have such a profound lack of understanding of human beings? Take Wiseau's bizarre masterpiece, The Room. Wiseau directs and star as Johnny, and the film revolves around his life with his venomous girlfriend, "Leeesa" and a teenager named Denny, originally scripted to be a mentally disabled child who has been taken under Wiseau's wing. At some stage it was decided that this was a little politically incorrect, so Wiseau cast a teenager without any of these problems. He did not, however, change the script in any way. This makes the moment where Denny asks if he can stick around and watch when Wiseau…

When I was a teenager I worked at a theater for 2 1/2 years that showed the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At the time, I never once thought to myself that the movie was bad and I never really got the impression from the shadow cast that they thought it was bad either. In fact, they really genuinely seemed to love it. As I grew older I came to appreciate that movie as a fun movie-going experience, but also on it's own terms, watching it at home by myself.

Watching The Room for the first time last night I was struck by how much the people in the audience were really forcing their crowd participation onto a movie that I…

A woman’s infidelity has repercussions on everyone around her, especially her boyfriend, who is torn apart by her callousness.

This is a vanity project for director/writer/leading man Tommy Wiseau, whose character is presented as saint-like, and whose muscular body the camera makes love to. But the movie strikes its first false note the moment Wiseau opens his mouth to speak. The odd enunciation is perhaps forgivable for one whose first language is not English, but there is no excuse for his wooden acting, and his character’s humanity is undermined by Wiseau’s creepy appearance. The other actors are also less than stellar (Carolyn Minnott is especially amateurish), but the script doesn’t give them much to work with.

The hilariously tone-deaf dialogue…