Franco's meta-take on the infamous The Room

Rating: Null/10 (8 December 2017)

Perhaps the hardest thing about judging THE DISASTER ARTIST is how to suss out how much of this odd bio-pic is sincere, and how much of it is James Franco putting on another of his art projects. The story of Tommy Wiseau (played by Franco himself) is intrinsically fascinating. A forty-something immigrant passes himself off as a twenty-something from New Orleans and moves to Hollywood with an actual twenty-something (Greg Sestero, played by Franco's real brother Dave). Each aspire to become actors. Together, they make a vanity project which becomes notorious as a 'So Bad It's Good' film classic. I personally drove past that curious Highland Boulevard billboard hundreds of times, shaking my head all the while.
DISASTER starts off promisingly. Franco seems earnest in trying to tell Wiseau and Sestero's off-beat Hollywood wannabe tale. The brothers Franco use their kinship to give their on screen friendship an extra bit of verisimilitude. As a Director, Franco manages to balance the satirical and the sensitive portrayal of the duo pretty nicely. And, then we get to the making of THE ROOM itself.
From there on, DISASTER takes a turn for the worse as the movie shunts aside much of the goodwill towards Wiseau in favor of mockery. Chief among the flaws is Seth Rogan as a fictionalized version of script supervisor Sandy Schklair (the actual Sandy quit during the shoot, and, in a bizarre turn of events actually tried to claim credit for Directing much of THE ROOM). Rogan comes off as a wise-ass who openly mocks Wiseau and the film from the get-go (Schklair has said he has trouble with the portrayal). Rogan's version of Sandy becomes a stand-in for all those who attend THE ROOM's midnight screening in order to hurl wisecracks at the hapless Wiseau. The fact that Wiseau now claims that his is "in" on the joke, doesn't make it any less cruel.
It's unfortunate that Franco lets this aspect take over DISASTER ARTIST. There is much to praise, including Franco's own uncanny mimicry of Wiseau's seemingly inimitable style (Franco's accent does slip a bit during the 'Directing' scenes). Parts of it seem to genuinely have an affinity for Wiseau and his dreams, and the depiction of the making of a low budget feature has a certain ring of truth to it, despite exaggerations.
And, yet... The big premiere scene isn't credible (I've been to many a disastrous screening, and, they don't spontaneously turn into a Rocky Horror style midnight event; my suspicions backed up by first person accounts of attendees). Why the Bryan Cranston scene was invented is never explained (to get in yet another celebrity cameo?). And, why maintain the illusion of a "mystery" surrounding Wiseau's origins? He's from Poland and he was in his late 40s when THE ROOM was made. Franco's brave decision to end the body of the movie with side by side clips of his recreations of scenes from THE ROOM with actual ones is quite meta (as good as they were, I have to say my attention still drifted more to Wiseau's originals than to the Franco ones; There's still something to be said about authenticity - even if incompetent).
A large group of millennials sat in the back row of the screening I attended. They seemed primed to mock Wiseau at every turn. And, on cue, they openly guffawed at every poorly pronounced word out of Franco/Wiseau's mouth. They cheered and jeered at all the infamously poor scenes recreated from THE ROOM. Even as someone who loves 'So Bad It's Good' movies myself, I found much of their reaction unsavory. They weren't just cheerfully playing along with Wiseau's amateurishness, they were ridiculing his accent, his very gall at trying. Unfortunately, I felt some of that crept into Franco's movie, even if semi-inadvertently. Compare that with ED WOOD where Tim Burton and screenwriters Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander openly showed great affection for that hapless filmmaker and his cockeyed dream. Franco's performance is deeper than Depp's in that film, but, it still can't save THE DISASTER ARTIST from its failings.