Most critics agree The Room is a terrible film and that this is beside the point. Nearly every review treats Tommy Wiseau’s drama as a midnight-screening ritual rather than a story, and the praise clusters around the audience: the thrown spoons and the shared pleasure of watching something fail so completely. Several find in Wiseau’s fixations, the pillow fights and the repeated Golden Gate Bridge shots, something raw and personal that makes it stranger than the usual bad film.
The reservations are about whether any of that amounts to a reason to watch. Variety, reviewing on release before the cult formed, finds it simply unpleasant and expects walkouts before the halfway point. Paste, writing two decades on, accepts the appeal but argues the so-bad-it’s-good mode has run its course. The spread is wide, from outright dismissal to something close to affection, and the score in the middle reflects a film critics enjoy describing more than they defend.