The Disaster Artist (2017, James Franco) (Patreon)

50/100

Tried to imagine the Alexander/Karaszewski version of this film at one point and quickly realized that they'd never have been interested. For all the fun poked by Ed Wood and Dolemite Is My Name, we're always meant to empathize with Wood and Moore's ambition; those films may or may not (more likely not) be accurate portraits, but both create a world in which enthusiasm and camaraderie mean far more than ability. That's just not possible with Wiseau, who comes across as such a solipsistic creep (in The Room as well as in real life) that ridiculing and/or recoiling from him are the only feasible options. J. Franco works hard, with partial success, to replicate Wiseau's half-strangled accent and semi-malevolent expressions, but he can't make us want to see this man succeed, even in the patronizing way proffered here (which amounts to "at least everyone's having a great time, even if it's at your expense"). In theory, Wiseau and Sestero's friendship serves as the emotional throughline; in practice, Wiseau's a disturbing DSM-5 case study, while D. Franco, in what I'll charitably deem a misguided bid at verisimilitude, plays Sestero as more opportunistic than chummy, merely taking full advantage of Wiseau's mysterious cash reserve. The inevitable result is that Seth Rogen's script supervisor, who just stands around commenting sarcastically on the idiocy before him, becomes our primary identification figure. I'm not saying that's never fun—loved that the shooting of "Oh hi Mark" culminates in the entire crew cheering when Wiseau delivers exactly what we see in The Room, because that, at long last, was the "good" take—but it's way too thin to sustain an entire feature. Might as well throw in Crow and Tom Servo.