Almost defines "odd"

Rating: 8/10 (2 May 2018)

Greg Sistero meets the downright peculiar Tommy Wiseau at acting classes in San Francisco. Finding an odd sort of mutual harmony, they go to Los Angeles to try to break into movies. When Hollywood fails to break their door down, they decide to make their own movie: Tommy writes, produces, directs and stars.
The opening titles tell you that this is based on a true story. Well, the Coen Brothers said the same thing at the start of Fargo, and there wasn't a word of truth in that. And how could this be true when Tommy is such an outrageous caricature of a character - long black hair, an impenetrable accent in which two thirds of all consonants go missing (think Benecio del Toro in The Usual Suspects x 10), and total mystery as to his true originals and, especially, the source of the money he uses to finance their film The Room.
This film is a little bit slow to get going, and my scepticism as to its veracity, coupled with the fact that the excessively mannered delivery of James Franco (not one of my favourite actors) as the ridiculous and enormously irritating Tommy meant that I was wondering wither to walk out or not. It was only the more likeable Dave Franco as the more likeable Greg that kept me in my seat.
But as the film production got under way and the titular disaster started to unfold, I got more intrigued, and ended up quite enjoying it.
It is populated by a host of the Franco brothers' celebrity friends, often unrecognisable, and all having great fun.
And the end titles and the sequence immediately preceding them add enormously to the impact of the film.
Directed by James Franco, this is obviously a pet project of sorts but, by the time it was over, I could see why it appealed to them. There is a vast amount of oddness here, but by the end the movie had overcome my initial substantial reservations.