The Room/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: The uneven moods, non sequiturs and inconsistencies leave this wide open for most of the characters.
    • Denny is, supposedly, an intelligent if slightly naive boy about to head off to university but given his actual behaviour - following a couple upstairs and jumping into their bed mid-foreplay, hitting on Johnny's fiance and then telling Johnny, selling drugs when he's the adopted son of a banker - even Wiseau himself admits the film makes more sense if you assume Denny has quite severe socialization and learning difficulties.
    • Since Lisa keeps switching between intended sympathy and total bitchiness, one is left to wonder whether she actually might have legitimate reason to cheat on Johnny with Mark that she hides behind the For the Evulz reasoning, or if she's just the sociopathic Complete Monster some other characters accuse her of being, especially since Johnny is the textbook case of a "Nice Guy".
    • Mark seems to change his personality during the pot-smoking scene as often as the man who is alternately rude and polite from Monty Python's Flying Circus. A lot of Mark's behavior seems to make more sense if you assume that the rooftop confrontation with Peter is not the only time he's high onscreen.
    • The scene in which Mark tells Johnny a story about a woman that was physically assaulted by one of the "many" men she was seeing seems oddly sketchy if you pay close attention to Mark's facial expressions as he tells the story. Mark can clearly be seen slightly smiling after saying "she ended up in a hospital on Guerrero Street". His situation behind the break-up with the "unseen" Betty character also seem to be very suspicious after hearing this story out. Lastly, when Mark tells Lisa to get out of his life following Johnny's suicide he proceeds to hit her in far harder fashion than Johnny is accused of.
      • When Johnny laughs at Mark's story, it might not be because he thinks it's funny, but because he thinks Mark is making it up, hence him saying "What a story, Mark!"
    • Claudette's dialogue makes much more sense if you assume she's a drama queen and an attention whore - traits that clearly run in the family. If, as she claims, "nobody listens" to her, this is probably not the first time she's made up something like breast cancer, hence Lisa's calm reaction.
    • The Newgrounds flash game gives an extended ending: Johnny is an incorporeal alien sent to Earth to learn earth customs. When he kills himself, he's merely releasing his alien form to return to the mothership and, provided the player collected all the MacGuffins, turns Earth into a giant spoon.
  • Angst? What Angst?: Dying? Breast cancer? "Don't worry about it!"
    • "They're curing people every day!"
  • Bile Fascination: Most likely the reason this is so popular.
  • Cult Classic: The Room continues to be screened in L.A. and other cities to this day, thanks to becoming a cult phenomenon. Not really surprising given how fascinatingly bizarre it is. Tommy Wiseau himself comes to these screenings to discuss the making of the film.=, though he does not reveal much....
  • Ear Worm: Courtesy of Kitra Williams, YOU ARE MY ROSE/YOU ARE MY ROSE/YOU ARE MY ROOOOOOOOSE.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Both "Doggie" - the dog that is lovingly referred to as such by Johnny at the flower shop, and even Chris R. seem to be considered the only good actors in the film, but that is not really saying much.
    • Several YouTubers have joked that the best actor in the film is the football. Which is true.
  • Fetish Retardant: Tommy Wiseau's naked ass. Excuse the full-body shudder.
  • Fridge Horror: Johnny was paying Denny's tuition and rent and while Lisa's in the same boat after Johnny's death we never see any parental figure for Denny to fall back on.
  • Ham and Cheese: Several.
    • Greg Ellery clearly knew what kind of movie he was in and his melodramatic performance brings life to the plodding birthday party.
    • Mike Holmes (Michelle's boyfriend Mike) spends the entire movie aping Jim Carrey, clearly playing for whatever sympathetic laughs he thinks he might get.
    • Dan Janjigian's performance as Chris-R is delightfully over-the-top. Some YouTube commenters have theorized that he was a real drug dealer who just started pointing a gun at Denny and not an actor at all.
    • According to script supervisor (and possible ghost director) Sandy Schklair, everyone knew full well what kind of movie they were making. Well, everyone except Tommy Wiseau.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Peter's last line, before he left the film and got replaced with Steven, is "That's it. I'm done".
  • Ho Yay: There's a bit between Johnny and Mark in the beginning, but it's quickly dropped in order to make room for the love triangle plot that drives the rest of the movie.
  • Manipulative Bitch: Dear God, Lisa. Mark flat-out lampshaded this.
  • Marty Stu: Johnny. Throughout the entire movie, he never actually does anything, other than have sex, buy some roses, and throw a football around. Everyone else's characters are defined, primarily, by their relationship to Johnny, and he somehow managed to land a major hottie, at least until he Ate His Gun.
    • Also, barely a scene passes without someone saying how great Johnny is (with how beautiful Lisa is coming a close second). The man can't even buy flowers without being told how wonderful he is.
  • Memetic Mutation: This may be one of the most quotable films of The Noughties. See Catchphrase.
    • You are tearing me apart, Lisa!
  • Narm: It's hard to imagine someone who does not think this of the whole movie. Maybe Tommy Wiseau.
  • One True Threesome: Lisa, Johnny, and Denny seem to have a suspiciously close relationship regardless of being surrogate family. Denny even comes and hangs out in the bedroom with them for a while when they clearly are working up to sex.
  • Padding:
    • Nothing between the second sex scene and the birthday party has any actual effect on the plot.
    • There were at least two or three establishing shots during one scene that took place in the same setting.
    • Probably the most obvious form of padding used is that of having characters essentially repeat scenes with only a few details changed. This is especially obvious when it comes to Lisa and Claudette, whose conversations with each other are always about virtually the same thing.
  • The Scrappy: LISA. Everyone in the movie's annoying due to their bad acting and/or stupidity, but she really takes the cake. Her mother, Claudette, is possibly EVEN WORSE.
  • So Bad It's Good: The film has become a cult classic for being so bad it's good - no, more like So Horrible It's Epic.
  • Squick: The rather graphic sex scenes between Lisa and Johnny. We see far more of Wiseau's particularly unappealing body than we need to. Actor Greg Ellery states that the Squick goes behind the scenes as well. The actress who plays Lisa was only 23 years old. Wiseau was 47.
    • More to it than that. Apparently Wiseau wanted it to be realistic, so he actually was completely naked while they filmed that scene. That's why he seems to be having sex with her naval - he wanted to make sure he didn't accidentally...erm get it in there.
    • There's one scene where Lisa's neck starts strangely spasming!
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Tommy Wiseau.
  • Ugly Cute: The doggy.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Johnny, who comes off as creepily obsessive and misogynistic rather than the model husband Tommy Wiseau intended him as. For instance, he laughs at the thought of a woman getting beaten up and going to the hospital, and later on, while claiming he never hit Lisa, he shoves her onto the couch when she is ready to walk away.
    • The really sad thing is that it could have been worse. Greg Sestero said that the take they used of "What a story, Mark!" was the best of the lot, and that when Wiseau did a take without laughing at the hospitalization story, it was somehow creepier and vastly more disturbing than the laughing takes.
  • What an Idiot!: Having sex with your fiancé's best friend at your fiancé's birthday party? Good thinking!