The Disaster Artist

The Disaster Artist does a fantastic job of bypassing the expectant mockery that James Franco, Seth Rogen et al. could very easily adhere to.

Instead, they offer up a treatise on Hollywood and the movie industry and the notion of following your dreams regardless of circumstance and talent, a potentially incongruous premise considering its status as a semi-biopic of the making of one of the most notoriously ‘bad’ movies ever made.

The Room is a film that just wouldn’t be made now in an era of safety-first, morally corrupt studio bigwigs. A self-funded, bafflingly nonsensical ego-trip for a Director/writer/producer and star with no qualifications in any of those vocations.

Despite this, the sense one earns from watching The Disaster Artist is a deep love for it, for whatever reason, from those involved. The painstaking lengths Franco, directing and starring, has gone to in order to recreate scenes and events from the film and the making of it are truly meticulous.

Franco goes above and beyond in performance as well; virtually unrecognisable as still-mysterious Tommy Wiseau, playing up his idiosyncrasies for laughs as well as shock and awe, but never crossing over the line fraught with mockery and exploitation.

His cast do the same; his brother Dave Franco and real-life partner Alison Brie, Seth Rogen and plenty of fantastic cameos, including a clearly delighted Zac Efron, and an intelligent choice of Judd Apatow as a producer, telling Tommy in an early scene that the Hollywood dream is “one in a million; even with Brando’s talent.”

As to be expected with the talent involved, there are some belly laughs mixed between intelligent scripting and more standard buffoonery, but there’s a maturation about this film, a greater sense of independence and care than their usual fare.

A bizarre choice of passion project it may be, but a great one nonetheless.

4 stars ****