Best F(r)iends: Volume 1 – 1 out of 5
I unapologetically love The Room. Yes, I love it because it is a bad movie but it’s magically bad. It hits all the right notes so that it’s fun to watch and is never boring. Because of this love, I am a fan of Tommy Wiseau (I even have a picture of him sitting at my desk in my cubicle in order to confuse my coworkers) and when I heard that Tommy and his partner from The Room; Greg Sestero (whom I always wanna call Greg Sinestro because my love of comics infiltrates every aspect of my life), were reuniting for a new film after 15 years I was all-in! Sadly, the two films (because it was so long they broke it up into two volumes) didn’t live up to my expectations and actually, to be blunt, bored the shit out of me.
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| He got the idea for the sign from a viral photo on his social media feed... and is probably the guy who uses memes as punchlines in conversations. |
Jon Kortina (Sinestro Sestero) is down-on-his-luck and homeless in the streets of LA. One day he is greeted by an eccentric mortician; Harvey Lewis (Wiseau), who offers him a job. As the two bond and become friends, Jon discovers that Harvey has collected gold fillings from corpses for years and that the scrap can sell for a high dollar amount. Going behind Harvey’s back, Jon sells some of the scrap to show Harvey their worth and, reluctantly, the two enter into a lucrative business of selling the gold. Eventually, Jon starts to mistrust Harvey due to his shady past and thinks he is withholding his share of the profits. With the help of his new girlfriend Traci (Kristen StephensonPino), the two hatch a plan to cut Harvey out of the deal and take all the profits for themselves but when their plan goes awry, tragedy follows.
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| If only he had this intense stare when he refuted the idea of him hitting Lisa. |
Probably the thing that did me in with this film is the fact I went in with expectations of The Room. These movies are not The Room. They weren’t written by Wiseau or directed by him. Granted, Sestero wrote the film (and I’ll get into that in a minute) but the film was directed by Justin MacGregor. However, that isn’t to say the film is well constructed. Visually, the film looks better than The Room and actually has some decent shots, especially the aerial footage which I assume was taken by a drone but, overall, the film’s quality visually is passable. Inherently there is nothing wrong with it but nothing about the film on a visual standard really stands out.
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| "Harvey...are you peeing?" |
One thing that does mirror The Room is the fact the performances are terrible. In The Room, the bad performances were part of the fun and what made the feature a joy to experience. This time around, possibly since the film looks more passable than amateurish, the bad performances only made the whole ordeal harder for me to sit through. The eccentricities that Wiseau featured in his more famous cult feature feels more distracting and out-of-place as the film is intended to be more grounded and Sestero’s complete inability to emote or even deliver a single line that feels natural and authentic resulted in a film that was incredibly groan-inducing…when it wasn’t yawn-inducing.
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| Paul Sheer has a cameo in the film. The best part about it is that it is short and you don't have to hear any of his creepy/annoying ad reads that you hear from him if you listen to How Did This Get Made? |
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| Why is it so momentous when Sestero shaves in his films? |
So, my biggest problem with the film is the fact it is super boring. The reason it is so boring is the fact the story isn’t interesting and there’s not enough development, conflict or general details surrounding the tale to make it interesting or even two whole freakin’ movies. The movie will tell you endlessly that Jon and Harvey are best friends but you will never get the sense that they are thanks to poor character development and terrible acting. Even worse, you can’t escape the realization that Sestero clearly believes he wrote a masterpiece due to the film’s overuse of dream sequences that come off like a dollar store’s version of a David Lynch film. Sestero couldn’t even clearly demonstrate that he understands the difference between protagonist and antagonist. Sestero really wants you to believe that Harvey is sneaky and doing some shady business and that he’s screwing Jon over but the film does this in a clumsy way. To top it off, Jon is the shitty one to begin with as he stole from Harvey (granted, they were gold fillings that Harvey stole to begin with) and then Jon later decides to stab Harvey in the back and take all the profits for himself and his girlfriend. There is literally no one to cheer for and you are just watching an unlikable character that the story desperately wants you to think is heroic doing shitty things with other shitty characters to another shitty character. And while all this is occurring, you can't escape the pretentious vibe the whole product is pumping out.
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| She found Jon's blandness irresistible. |
Best F(r)iends: Volume 1 is a bad movie. It lacks the magic of “good” bad movies so it isn’t fun and, instead, is just a pompous bad feature that has its head stuck up its ass and thinks it is great. It lacks character, intrigue and contains nothing about it to make it engaging or entertaining. It’s bloated with dead weight that should have been left on the cutting room floor and more effort needed to go into character and story development and far less time spent on “dream sequences.” Add in really atrocious and uneven talents from the entire cast and you are left with a messy film that stinks of undeserving confidence that drags its narrative and meanders lethargically through a cloud of boredom.
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