James Franco

THE DISASTER ARTIST: deluded incompetence makes for successful comedy

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Dave Franco and James Franco in THE DISASTER ARTIST

 

Really bad movies can be so unintentionally funny that they are fun to watch and mock. Such is the case with The Room, which has risen to number 2 in my Bad Movie Festival.  The Room was a vanity project that was written and directed by its star, Tommy Wiseau, with his ravaged face, stringy hair and undeterminable accent. To fully appreciate Tommy Wiseau’s performance, search YouTube for “you’re tearing me apart Lisa!” – or watch The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s hilarious docucomedy about the making of The Room.

The primary element in The Disaster Artist (and the primary appeal of The Room) is that Wiseau is absolutely confident in his own talent, despite no validation from any one else.

Wiseau himself is a mystery. No one knows where he was born, how old he is or how he amassed enough of a fortune to blow six million dollars on making The Room.  He is so psychologically non-functional, he couldn’t have made millions on his own.  His accent betrays an origin someplace between Belgrade and St. Petersburg, even though he ridiculously claims the accent is from New Orleans.

Anyone who has watched The Room will marvel at James Franco’s brilliance in capturing all of Wiseu’s awkward and offbeat mannerisms.  It’s a remarkable, All In comedic performance and the core of the film.

The Disaster Artist is based on the book by Greg Sestero, Wiseu’s friend/muse/roommate, on the making of the movie.  Sistero is played by Dave Franco (and Sistero’s girlfriend Amber is played by Dave Franco’s real-life wife, Alison Brie).  The entire cast, which includes Seth Rogen and Jacki Weaver is excellent.

This is a very successful comedy.  The Disaster Artist is one of the funniest movies of the year.

Note:  The end of The Disaster Artist features a split screen for the very worst scenes of The Room side-by-side with the re-enactments by the cast of The Disaster Artist.  And make sure you wait through ALL the end credits for an encounter between the real Tommy Wiseau and James Franco in character as Wiseau.

Note #2:  Yes, I have turned to The Wife and bellowed, “you’re tearing me apart, Lisa!”

2011 in Movies: biggest disappointments

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LE QUATTRO VOLTE

1.  I haven’t seen Killer Joe, Restless and Tyrannosaur becuase they haven’t been released where I live.  And I haven’t seen Oslo August 3, The Kid on the Bike, Paul Williams Still Alive, Natural Selection, Polisse and Little White Lies because – as far as I know – they haven’t yet been released in the US.  You can read descriptions and watch trailers of these films as Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

 

2.  Meek’s Cutoff is an unfortunate misfire by the excellent director Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy).

 

3.  Le Quattro Volte is supposed to be a lyrical contemplation on the Circle of Life, but you’ll find yourself checking your watch during the interminable hacking of an aged goatherd.  If the geezer had taken Robitussin DM, there would be no story at all.

 

4.  The bewildering, pompous mess that is The Tree of Life .  It does contain a fine 90-minute family drama about a boy growing up in 1950s Waco (a superb Hunter McCracken) and the friction with his caring but brutishly domineering father (Brad Pitt). Unfortunately, there is another 60 minutes in the movie.

That additional 60 minutes is a self-important muddle that tries to lift the story to an exploration of life itself – from creation through afterlife. There are beautiful shots of clouds and waterfalls, with unintelligible whisperings from cast members. There are Bible verses, the Big Bang and dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs). And, in case you don’t get how seriously the movie takes itself, there is an overbearingly pretentious score.

 

5. The Hangover Part II.  I really enjoyed The Hangover, but the sequel was just lame.

 

6.  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is by no means a bad film, but I expected more from the winner of the Palm d’Or.

 

7.  David Gordon Green, director of All the Real Girls, Undertow, Snow Angels and Pineapple Express, showed up this year with The Sitter.  Say it ain’t so, Dave.

 

8.  HBO’s take on the financial meltdown, Too Big To Fail, failed in spite of an excellent cast.  It wasn’t nearly as good as last year’s great documentary Inside Job or this year’s fictional Margin Call.

 

9.  James Franco co-hosting the Academy Awards.  Lay off the weed, Jimmy!

 

10.  After watching the jaw droppingly awful trailer, I was hoping that Nicholas Cage’s Season of the Witch would be deliciously and entertainingly laugh out loud bad. But it was just bad.

 

127 Hours – Not just a cringefest

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127 Hours is surprisingly entertaining – surprisingly because you know, even before entering the theater, that the protagonist is going to get trapped under a rock and make his escape by cutting off his own arm.  Although there are cringeworthy moments (not only the amputation), it’s not just a cringefest.  This is a Danny Boyle movie after all, so there is lots of eye candy and a pounding score.  But Boyle also  framed a  character for James Franco to play who is very fun at the beginning and more textured as his ordeal unfolds.  And Franco, as usual, is wonderful.

Howl

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Howl‘s filmmakers made a risky choice that pays off and a safe choice that doesn’t.  The risky choice is to make the film about a poem, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, not a conventional biopic of Ginsberg or a courtroom drama about the famous obscenity trial.  This is risky because poetry is not embraced by the mass audience; in our culture, poetry makes opera look like NASCAR in terms of popularity.  Yet the movie is at its strongest in the segments where James Franco’s Ginsberg reads from Howl.  The poem Howl – with its pain, rage, alienation and rebellion – is the best part of the movie Howl.   Snippets of Ginsberg’s life and the trial are placed about to give context to the poem.

The unfortunately safe choice is using animation to interpret the poem.  The poem evokes powerful imagery in the minds of the audience.  Here, the animation is very literal, so we see – and are distracted by – the images instead of thinking them up ourselves.  Maybe the filmmakers didn’t think that the audience would accept the unadorned reading of a poem.  Howl is a long poem, but the filmmakers do an effective job in delivering it to us in segments.  The language of the poem is not a shocking today as it was in the 50s, but definitely gets your attention.

Franco is great.  Jeff Daniels has a small juicy part, but David Straithern, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, Bob Balaban, Treat Williams and Allesandro Nivona don’t have much to do.

The writer-directors here are Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who made the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk., which is one of the great documentaries and one of the great political films.