Saw it last night, my thoughts on Best F(r)iends
A friend asked me this morning if Best F(r)iends was better than The Room and I responded that it was probably better but less watchable. The truth is if this didn’t star the cult duo of Wiseau and Sestero, I probably never would’ve given this movie a second look. The biggest problem is it’s not bad enough to be a midnight cult hit like The Room nor is it good enough to succeed on the merits of its writing, acting, or directing. So as a film, that leaves it like a thousand other low budget and poorly acted straight-to-streaming movies that you’ve probably passed over on Netflix/Hulu/Prime on a daily basis.
While watching, two questions kept floating through my mind: If I didn’t know who Tommy Wiseau was, would I think I was watching some brilliant portrayal of mental illness? And if this had starred someone who could actually memorize lines (instead of delivering a loose approximation of them like Wiseau clearly was) would it have been significantly better? I don’t know the answers to those questions but I can say that Tommy Wiseau becomes more of a distraction than anything else. Hard to believe but I think his acting in The Room was actually superior to his performance in this film. Although it didn’t help that there were 5 or 6 people behind me that cracked up every time he spoke (I thought they might explode when he said “Oh hai John”).
I didn’t get into the plot because honestly that’s not what drew me to go see it and I doubt it's the main attraction for anyone else, but if you have any questions regarding it let me know.