Best F(r)iends: Volume 2 – 1 out of 5
I probably came off harsh with my review of Best F(r)iends: Volume 1 (which you can read here) but I found the film so Gee Dee boring. I probably should have chalked this one up to a loss and moved on but I’m nothing if not a completionist and will often see franchises, even ones I think are pure shit, to the bitter end once I’ve started them. Besides, this was supposed to be one super long movie so, technically, I’m not watching a sequel but the second half of the first film so I can’t really give up now. Although, I really should have given up on Best F(r)iends because this second half is no better than the first.
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| Anyway, I wonder how his sex life is... |
After Jon (Greg Sestero) and his girlfriend Traci (Kristen StephensonPino) successfully got the strange mortician Harvey (Tommy Wiseau) out of the picture, they are free to take all the profits of the business that Jon and Harvey started—the one that involves selling gold fillings under the table. The problem is that Harvey kept all the money is his safe that looks like an ATM and they can’t get in. Traci enlists the help of her uncle (Rick Edwards) but as they try to recover the cash Jon soon learns that things aren’t what they seem and there are enemies lurking in every corner and Harvey might still be hiding in the shadows.
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| Behold, the closest thing this movie gets to a realistic reaction. |
Sadly, all the problems of the first film are still evident in this one. This isn’t really a surprise since the two films were originally intended to be one film but, since the production couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make the sacrifices needed to tighten up and condense all the fluff in the story, the movie was split. To be extremely blunt, this movie is super boring and the resolution that this volume delivers isn’t nearly satisfying enough to warrant two movies. In fact, above anything else, Volume 2 justifies why this feature just needed to be trimmed down greatly and turned into just one, presumably still boring, hour and a half feature.
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| "Get in, Loser. We're gonna 'Oh hai' people." |
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| I'm gonna guess that Rick Edwards got paid by the word. |
The performances aren’t fairing any better as the story progresses. Tommy Wiseau’s eccentric acting style feels completely against the grain of the tone of the film, Greg Sestero actually feels like he is trying less in this second half of the tale and, finally, a the new character of Uncle Rick is just painful to endure. I’m not entirely sure if Sestero wrote Rick Stanton’s dialogue for Uncle Rick or is actor Rick Edwards just improved all his line but Edwards sure does love the sound of his voice. The character never stops talking and he’s rarely contributing anything when he opens his mouth. The character is constantly spewing out backstory that never feels warranted and Edwards just can’t make this or the bravado the character has feel natural. This just further adds to the messy feel of the film as the performance styles are all over the place and it creates a world that feels aloof and completely contradictory to the story’s tone (and not in an intentional way). Basically, the cast is just further making the film look and feel amateurish.
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| Well, a zombie Wiseau is possibly the creepiest thing to ever exist. |
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| Oh boy, another cameo from Paul Scheer. What did we do to deserve this? Because I'm truly sorry for it. |
Finally, this story is in desperate need of an edit and a second draft of the script. The central pillar of the tale is already hard to swallow because it requires a metric ton of suspension of disbelief to buy that these two men are somehow making tons of cash off of some gold fillings but it might have worked if the characters and their relationship was developed better. Their partnership never feels solid. They don’t come off like friends at all so, when the inevitable betrayal occurs, it never feels momentous. Perhaps if the dream sequences that plague both volumes had been cut in half and more time to the exploration of character was done the story might have worked but the overall biggest problem feels like creator ego. Watching this, I got the distinct feeling that Greg Sestero wanted every single, solitary thing he wrote to be on screen and I’m hard-pressed to believe that anything was edited out of this film. It is so bloated with filler, pointless and arbitrary backstory, and pretentious visual sequences that do nothing for the plot that over an hour could have been taken out and not a single bit of harm would have occurred to the story. It’s this never ending waste of time that makes both features feel so boring and robs the film of character merit. This volume literally introduces characters and then acts like they are important to the overall narrative without ever actually contributing to the actual plot in a meaningful way.
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| One jug is for water and one is for pee. He confuses them more often than one should. |
It was my mistake to go in with expectations of The Roomwhen I sat down to watch Best F(r)iends: Volume 1 and Best F(r)iends: Volume 2. The reality is The Room was a special kind of magic that just can’t be conjured twice but due to the presence of Wiseau and Sestero, there was a good chance I was going to see a different but amusingly similar beast with this one. At the very least, I had hoped I was going to watch a bad movie that was fun to experience but, instead, was treated to two bad movies that were incredibly boring and moved ridiculously slowly. I honestly can’t picture these films becoming cult classics and, for me, the replay value is completely nonexistent. Overall, I found both films to be incredibly disappointing.
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