4.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.1 |
A happy-go-lucky banker sees his world fall apart when his friends begin to betray him one-by-one.
Starring: Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero, Philip Haldiman, Carolyn MinnottDrama | Insignificant |
Romance | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 1.5 | |
Audio | 2.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 1.5 |
Imagine being frozen in fear as you watch a freight train barrel down on you as you freely stand on the tracks, or as the timer on a bomb ticks away before your face, leaving you transfixed on the pending doom even with every opportunity to run away, and then crash! boom! you're struck, you explode, yet somehow still there to witness the carnage, and willingly so, that has befallen you, to soak in the grisly gore and ponder the aftermath of total destruction. That might be sort of like the willingness to enter into, the viewing of, and the later contemplation on The Room, one of the mot notoriously awful movies of all time, a film that beckons against all better judgment, proves absolutely destructive in its very essence, yet somehow strengthens the resolve to bask in its glow and in the messy aftermath. This is a film with a powerful, yet curious, draw, if only to see what all the fuss is about and watch another fuss unfold on the screen. It's a curious film, a weird film, a terrible film, but...it...just...draws. Who knows. Watch it for yourself and see.
The Room was shot with both digital and 35mm film cameras simultaneously. If they are intermixed together in the film cut I cannot say with confidence because the quality is rather poor regardless of the source. There are many problems, and most of them teeter on the side of "egregious." The opening title sequence reveals some judder and wobble as well as some spots and speckles, the former of which appears to settle, for the most part, beyond a few jarringly jittery shots, but the latter remains throughout. Banding is problematic in places, too, at times mildly, at times severely. Compression issues are obvious in spots and take a turn for the extreme in a few select shots, namely at the following timestamps 20:13, 31:19, 50:49, and 1:30:50. These are the direst examples, and they are so bad as to absolutely destroy the integrity of the shot. The image lacks any kind of authoritative detailing. It's flat, drab, and lacking any sort of crispness that one would expect to find with a good quality Blu-ray based on either a digital or film source. When it is clear that film is being shown, grain fluctuates from mild to overly dense and snowy. Colors are very flat and lifeless. Look at the 20:40 mark. The movie looks like it's 40 years old and faded here and in other spots as well. The red dress Lisa receives at the beginning lacks any sort of punch or even tonal nuance. Blacks look flat and faded at the 65-minute mark. Skin tones are unremarkable. This does not look good at all.
Unfortunately, Wiseau-Films delivers The Room to Blu-ray with a DVD quality Dolby Digital 5.1 lossy soundtrack. The absence of tighter fidelity and faithfulness is apparent from the opening musical elements. The music lacks that distinctive crispness and absolute fidelity lossless offers, but at least spacing is good. Music follows a similar pattern throughout. There are not many high-yield sound effects, and none stand apart, even during some of the more prominent examples in the film's final minutes. Dialogue is the main audio element here, and the presentation is adequate with center grounding and good prioritization but, like the music, a notable absence of the lifelike and authoritative presentation posture that lossless (and better sound capture) provides.
This Blu-ray release of The Room contains a few extras that can be as bizarre as the movie itself. The main menu is of DVD standards (no
seamless transition from one page to another) but it is made of full motion video on the main page (and static
stills on others) with accompanying music and dialogue in film clips. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship
with a slipcover. However, it does include an insert sheet listing the film's chapters on one side and an advertisement (with coupon code) for The
Room merchandise on the other. There is also alternate artwork on the inside of the Blu-ray jacket.
Maybe the big question for a film like The Room, a film that even more than a decade after its Blu-ray release is selling for $25 at time of writing, is, is it worth the cost? Not just the financial cost, but also the emotional cost of investing in a known commodity that brings with it only gloom and despair or, if you're lucky, a hearty laugh response that might just make it worthwhile? Hard to say. Is this a cult classic with repeat replay value, or is it just a bad movie in the tradition of Manos: The Hands of Fate? It probably sits on the former end of the scale, and it fits there so well that one has to question if Wiseau just got lucky making a movie this bad, or if he's such a creative genius that he knew what he was doing all along? Either way he's definitely rolling with it now, and even if the film was not the success he imagined, it's still on the tip of every cinephile's tongue now more than a decade from its release. Most films can't say that. Sadly, the Blu-ray is atrocious. While the extras are OK, the video quality is borderline lousy and the lossy audio is not much better. Still, this is probably one of those films that every serious home library should have.
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