Top Ten Best Movies, Number Ten

If I gave you a comment or a favorite and you are here to thank me, give me a llama. I detest generic thank you comments. But who in the world doesn't want a llama?

I thought about this. And I decided I'd do one a day as a countdown. So today we are starting

10. The Room

As much as my heart urges me to put this movie lower on the list, it is quite a risk to even put it at number ten. Of all the movies that could go here I'm picking a movie that if watched for its artistry, is one of the worst movies of all time.

But if watched with the proper mood and the proper understanding of how to enjoy this movie, its a masterpiece.

When Tommy Wiseau set out to create this film, his dream was a melodramatic tear-fest. In which the main character would be a heart throb betrayed.

He spent six million dollars on this project, firing a number of actors originally cast, and a ton of the crew. Anyone who questioned his flawless vision was struck by the lightning that sprung from Tommy Wiseau's very hands.

After all the filming and editing was done... Tommy Wiseau had the film screened for contention in the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.

I heard a story from one long time fan who knows Tommy Wiseau personally and was present at the first screening of The Room. This man was a stranger to me, but I have no reason to doubt this story.

"It was at the screening for the Golden Globes. Tommy gave us a brief introduction to the movie, saying basically what he did in the DVD interview, he had an idea for a story and decided to make a movie. It was very odd. So when the movie started, from the first moment of the movie, there was this odd tension in the theater. It was that feeling of trying not to laugh, times a thousand, and it permeated the air. You could feel laughter on the edge of everyones mind. And of course this wasn't a casual screening, this was for real serious awards, you couldn't just laugh during a screening like this. Several people stood up, walked out of the theater, and laughed right as soon as the door closed. You could barely hear it. Eventually the Flower Shop scene came on. Down in the front there was this old lady in a wheelchair, and she had been giggling audibly throughout the whole movie, but of course no one was going to tell the woman in the wheelchair to stop laughing. But as the flower shop scene passed, she was laughing louder and louder, until Johnny patted that dogs head and said 'Hi doggy' then she burst out laughing, and with that the dam had burst. We were all laughing, and Tommy at the end of the movie looked extremely proud, feeling that as long as people enjoyed it, all was well with the world."

The Room may not have achieved its goals, but it did achieve one thing. The Room is the single greatest comedy movie of all time.

It is by far the funniest and most entertaining movie I've ever seen. The laughs are nonstop throughout the movie.

The humor defies genre, sort of. Its the same humor you find with any bad movie. Most bad movies have 'that moment.' You know the one, its the moment in Troll 2 where Arnold screams "They're eating her... and then they're gonna eat me.... OH MY GOOOOOD!" Or in Silent Night Deadly Night 2 where a man shoots another man taking out his garbage. Its that moment of logic defying stupidity that is too much for your brain, which then must convert it into humor.

And yet, the Room surpasses both these movies for one simple reason... The Room is 'that moment' throughout the entire movie. Troll 2 is a ninety-five minute movie, and most of those minutes are spent in souring boredom. Likewise, Silent Night Deadly Night 2 is an eighty-eight minute movie, and most of the movie is the main character telling the story of the last movie.

The Room on the other hand, never has a single scene in which something funny doesn't happen. Even the extremely awkward moment inducing sex scenes, excuse me, LOVE scenes have a humor in them.

Nothing in the Room is done right, the setting, the story, the dialog, the props, the extras, the characters, the random green screen use, the facial expressions, the constant dubbing which doesn't fit, etc. But this all simmers together and makes an experience in film you aren't soon to forget, and will probably change how you look at movies entirely.

Even better than the movie itself however, the screenings. Indeed the difference between the screenings and the home viewings are so vast they can almost be called two different movies. No better than that. The screenings are the difference between listening to an album, and going to a concert.

The crowd is just alive. It isn't like watching any other movie in a theater. Everyone else is the entertainment, indeed, you yourself are part of the attraction to the screenings. You are a part of it, and everyone is connected by the movie for those short hours.

I've made friends at these screenings. And I've gotten many jokes from others about the movie that I still repeat during screenings. Many of my jokes have been picked up by the audience.

And The Room breaks the normality of the world, indeed no where does it feel more like the rules of society are broken than during a screening. Rude jokes? Sex jokes? All okay, because Tommy Wiseau himself broke these rules inside his own movie.

The Room deserves to be among the great movies of our time. No other movie has ever achieved the kind of feeling I get when watching it. And it is one of the few movies that I can truly say changed my life.