"You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don't hurt each other." - Tommy Wiseau

Rating: 7/10 (7 December 2017)

How anyone could watch 'The Room' - a nearly impressively incompetent flick which fails on seemingly every conceivable level and yet has captured the hearts of thousands of audience members, earning the unofficial title of 'best worst movie' in the process - an alleged thousand times is almost beyond my comprehension and yet this is exactly what James Franco claims to have done in order to successfully step into the skin of the strange enigma that is Tommy Wiseau, and, while his exact number may have been wholly hyperbolic, the sentiment still remains the same, a feature so universally panned is still somehow so universally loved and brings joy to so many people; 'The Disaster Artist', a biographical comedy/drama, aims to explore both how such an almost admirably ill-conceived work could possibly come about, let alone continue to be crafted to a release- ready point, and why it is so oddly appreciated, and what this particular picture does so well is recreate the most iconic segments from the original piece (a side-by-side comparison is almost seamless) while also paying homage to the little mysteries and tidbits that those familiar with it will appreciate greatly, but there's much more than just a collage of comedic callbacks to be found here, namely a rather meaty emotional through-line and fairly in-depth character study, and it is this that keeps the fairly funny feature from falling too far into parody. 7/10