A film that could have been better only if...

Rating: 7/10 (20 August 2019)

Here is a movie that was perfectly gift wrapped for them from the start: a movie so terrible that reached cult status, a great book and audiobook that depicts everything involving the complex friendship between these two people, along with the hilarious details that depict the behind the scenes of this movie. However, due to James Franco's inexperienced directing and changes, I feel that the movie was good and fun to watch, but wasn't able to be the great movie it was meant to be.
I may be biased here as I really loved the audiobook and Greg Sestero went to great detail into everything that happened and doing a very good impression of his friend, Tommy Wiseau. One problem I've had with this movie was the miscasting of the main characters and with James Franco himself. He did a decent job doing the voice and gave a nice performance, but it only felt like an impersonation rather than him embracing the role. I only saw Franco being Tommy and Franco was able to be funny as this person, but didn't feel like he was the right match for the character and the makeup didn't fully work on him. You have a lot of recognizable faces in the cast and many of them do a decent job in their roles, however, the film felt a little rushed and didn't focus too much on the overall reactions and chaos that these people had to go through during production. Franco's directing also doesn't pay off as there were times that the film did drag on and lost it's pace during some of the scenes. The way he would film a scene and the structure of the story felt a little imbalanced at times and wished he would have made it a bit more cohesive.
You can tell that Franco had his heart in the right place as he wanted to respect Tommy for what he had done, especially toward the film that he had made. I really liked how the movie portrayed the friendship between these two men who are just total opposites of each other. You do get an understanding how these two developed an odd relationship that has continued to this day. Also, seeing the actors portraying what happened on set really brought the humor and entertainment. I laughed at the bits that they have focused on. However, this is another fault of the movie as I felt that the movie didn't go all out. The film only focused on a few parts on what happened during production and I felt that there were a few more things that could have been added to really add more juice to the overall film. It lacks the seriousness and the tension that had built up from the people on set and only had the people simply being annoyed and not doing anything else with them.
I do not hate this movie and rather enjoyed myself, but because I've listened to the audiobook, the changes that Franco made and his directing made me feel a little disappointed. It's still worth watching and quite enjoyable, but I do think that by having a better director and having someone who does have experience behind the camera could have made this movie better than it was. It's clear that Franco wanted to focus more on the production rather than the characters. If he was able to balance both of them out perfectly, then this would have been an even better movie than what had turned out.