Best F(r)iends

There’s no need to go over The Room and its impact on pulp culture and on me specifically.  If you don’t know who Tommy Wiseau is, or what The Room is, I can’t help you anymore.  What I can do is introduce you to the brainchild of two of that film’s stars, Wiseau and his friend Greg Sestero, Best F(r)iends.

As he would detail in his book, The Disaster Artist, Sestero and Wiseau went on a road trip in 2003 that eventually resulted in the mysterious Wiseau becoming convinced that his friend was set to kill him.  Obviously, that did not happen, but that sense of paranoia and mutual suspicion colored their relationship for years.  This event spawned, after the two reconciled, Best F(r)iends.

The plot follows Sestero’s drifter person Jon as he malingers about Los Angeles.  He meets an enigmatic mortician named Harvey (you’d better believe it’s Wiseau, kids), who gives Jon a job, and the two become friends.  As things progress, Jon meets a lovely bartender and engages in a deal to sell the piles of dental gold Harvey’s accumulated over the years.  But now that gobs of money are involved, suspicion embeds itself in the pair, and the friendship threatens to implode.

It’s difficult to judge this film, honestly, as it’s only half a film:  Apparently, they shot so much material that they decided to split the project in twain, the second half coming later this year.  As such, we’ve yet to see the full story, and what we do have thus far defies simple categorization.  There’s clearly a somewhat light tone at play, but much of the drama is treated rather earnestly; Wiseau’s characteristic participation muddies things further, as many of his lines come off as ad libbed and his delivery, as you might expect, brings more than enough eccentricity for any project.  There’s plenty of deliberately comedic moments, some of which land while others don’t, and this stands in strange contrast to the ostensibly straight-faced bits that are tarnished by either Wiseau’s acting or the film’s general breezy attitude.  I liken this to a sedated Harmony Korine production lacking any of that director’s artistic flourishes (say what you will about him, he’s got style), a Mister Lonely that somehow meanders further and accomplishes less.  It’s weird, suffice it to say.

Though he’s still wildly out-of-place in front of the camera, Wiseau actually kinda works as a mortician who lacks social contact and spends his time amongst corpses, but he seems in on the joke here (much as he did in Samurai Cop 2), and that diminishes his impact a bit.  Sestero, currently looking like a tired amalgam of Owen Wilson and Dax Shepard, oscillates between earnestness and a similar in-on-the-joke feel, not unlike the Bill character from Birdemic 2, resulting in an overall uneven performance.  His script bears the same dichotomous issues and is laden with dead air, a sign of his lack of screenwriting experience.  The camera has that palpably digital quality that screams high-end YouTube series, and the sound mixing seems about on that particular par.  Justin MacGregor’s direction doesn’t bring much to the table, either (this is his largest production to date), though there are occasional shots that show some effort at play, even if they’re few and far between.  The score from Imagine Dragons drummer Daniel Platzman is overbearing, his warbling guitar effects obstreperously overpowering everything when they play – a fact exacerbated by a sound mix that favors the score in every scene – and grating from very early on.

Aside from the technical shortcomings, though, there is enjoyment to be had here, especially if you can still muster the old good feelings for Wiseau’s mannerisms.  I read a lot of Adult Swim live action comedy language here, stuff I was never able to get into at all, but I still found myself laughing every now and again.  There’s also the warm fuzzies one can get in the relating of the overwrought story on screen to the real-life relationship between Wiseau and Sestero and picturing them laughing all the way through this production.  Time will tell if things actually wind up satisfactorily in Volume 2, but this first piece of the puzzle left me partially entertained and partially nonplussed.  It’s the ultimate mixed bag, and I can’t help but feel my reluctance to hate it stems from my personal history with Wiseau’s misadventures and hope that everything’s a joke from here on out.  As such, your mileage with this film will vary, depending on your previous experience with these folks, but I’m gonna lean toward “mixed bag” at best.  We’ll touch base in the summer after the second part comes out, ‘kay?

Edit from the future: It’s the summer, and here’s the base-touching.