With a film like this, why even try? Unrateable.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror has become something of a modern day legend over the last two years.  As a recent submission into the pantheon of so-bad-its-rad films like The Room and Troll 2, Birdemic has made its way through the minds of movie geeks everywhere by way of bizarre online trailers and compilations.  Earlier this year, Birdemic was released on DVD and Blu-ray to packs of curious nerds who could finally answer the question: How bad is Birdemic?

Yes, Birdemic is terrible, but is it the right kind of terrible?  Bad films come in all shapes and sizes, and for as many as there are out there ((don’t)see: Sucker Punch), it takes a very particular brand of bad to be fully enjoyed in spite of- and because of- itself.  Birdemic is baffling and bizarre enough to fit those criteria, and although it is not quite bad/good enough to take on The Room, it is fit enough for the MST3K silhouette in all of us.

Marketed as a “romantic thriller,” Birdemic takes place in a small, coastal town in Northern California where software salesman Rod (Alan Bagh) reunites with Nathalie (Whitney Moore), an old high school classmate and apparent model (Nathalie shoots her spreads at a non-descript Rite Aid-esque location; I’m not sure what to make of that).  Just as Rod’s career and relationship with Nathalie reaches the next level, birds begin to mercilessly attack the city for no perceivable reason.

The bird effects have already become the stuff of YouTube legend, and for good reason: they are unbelievably awful.  All the birds are computer generated and look like screensaver icons from the pre-i days of Apple.  However, the birds’ appearance pales in comparison to the way they move.  Virtually every movement is impossible; they rotate a full 360 degrees, dart across the screen like computer cursors, and some of the birds seem to be set at fixed points of the picture, so when the camera moves in any way, certain birds move along with the camera, staying in the place in relation to the camera lens.  Best of all though: they explode.  No, really, the birds fly into buildings and blow up, like nature’s own kamikaze pilots.

Some may believe Birdemic to be a one trick pony, that the awkward birds are all the film has going for it, but the birds only serve as the film’s hook.  The characters and non-bird related subplots provide just as much laughter and befuddlement, particularly the environmental message that shows up at various points in the film.  Early in the film, a few characters are discussing the benefits of buying a Prius after seeing An Inconvenient Truth.  Later, the main characters come across a scientist standing in a field, and then a character known as “Tree hugger,” who both blame mankind’s treatment of the planet as the reason behind the birds’ behavior.

The acting does not help the poor dialogue, ludicrous story or the “Go Green!” plea in the film.  The acting is about as wooden as wood can get, and each character delivers their lines as though they are reading them for the first time; everything sounds stiff, stilted and entirely disconnected from the events of the film.  Appropriately enough, the sound periodically drops throughout the whole of the film, which adds to the characters’ disconnection from the plot, as well as the audiences’ idiosyncratic experience towards the film as a whole.

There is a scene that is slowly becoming popular, and was even shown in an episode of The Soup a few months back that sums up the films’ disassociation with itself: the “boardroom scene.”  In it, Rod and his co-workers are assembled and told that they succeeded in making “a part of a billion dollars,” a term so deliberately vague that it may prove that Birdemic’s auteur James Nguyen doesn’t know what words or syntax are.  This announcement is followed by two minutes of non-stop, self-congratulatory applause accompanied by a continuous pan around the room.  The vacant, smiling faces of the actors and disjointed editing provide such an off-kilter stamp on the scene that it will make one ask, “Seriously though, we’re watching real movie, right?”

Watching Birdemic is similar to watching Manos: The Hands of Fate for the first time: people will not believe what they are seeing and openly question whether or not the movie is real, or some kind of post-modern, avant garde art experiment that is meant to blow peoples’ minds.  I don’t give Nguyen that much credit, but it is something of an accidental marvel that a film so nonsensical and bizarre came together in the first place and found an audience who love a good roast.  Birdemic is no Room, but it is too bizarre to pass up.  Rent it and call some friends; you’ve got movie sign.

Works of great cinematic art are a funny thing.  Often, they are the result of a brilliant script, fantastic direction and solid performances by able actors.  Sometimes, however, greatness can be achieved entirely by accident, or in spite of itself.  Such is the curious case of The Room.

The Room is about soon-to-be married couple Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) and Lisa (Juliette Danielle), and how their relationship quickly falls apart due to Lisa’s secret relationship with Tommy’s best friend Mark (Greg Sestero).  As an audience member, you’re supposed to care what happens in the film; you will not care about this story in The Room.  The story is, more or less, an unintended macguffin that contains the greatest train wreck in cinematic history.

Where do I even begin?

Well, for one, there are 3 clumsy love scenes in the first 26 minutes of the movie, all to ultra-cheesy R&B music.  I don’t have much to say about this in particular, except that this has to be some kind of record, even by porno standards.

For one, the dialogue in this film is atrocious on a level I have never experienced.  All of the conversations never really go anywhere; things are brought up, then immediately brushed aside in one way or another.  Lisa frequently brings up her dying feelings for Johnny with her mother and BFF, than dismisses any questions thereafter, saying “I don’t want to talk about it.”  You don’t want to talk about it?  You brought it up!  Other discussions are usually interrupted by Denny, Johnny and Lisa’s goofy, plucky neighbor who often realizes he has somewhere else to be the moment he walks into the room.

Denny is actually rather instrumental to The Room because he instigates one of the most perplexing of unintentional gags in the film: football.  In the middle of discussions between the male characters, Denny often stumbles in with a football, in which everyone jumps up eagerly to toss the old pigskin around.  In one particularly bizarre scene, all the men in a scene play a game of football whilst wearing tuxedos.  There is never any explanation for why they are wearing tuxedos, they just are.

Impromptu games of football aren’t the only things that come from and go nowhere; characters and subplots are just as disposable.  One throwaway hit is a one-on-one between Lisa and her mother, in which the mother reveals she has breast cancer.  One would think a parent diagnosed with breast cancer would be, at the very least, add an extra layer of conflict in the film or its characters, but this discovery is announced and subsequently dismissed in the same breath, never to brought up again.

My favorite disappearing act lies with Peter, a friend of Johnny and Mark’s, who shows up out of nowhere in the middle of the film and vanishes shortly after a game of football.  Soon after, Steven, a man who we have never seen before, is lecturing Lisa about her dishonesty with Johnny, as if he’s some long lost friend whom the audience should have seen much earlier in the film.  Interesting tidbit: the actor who played Peter quit halfway through production, thus all of his later lines were given to a different actor/character.  Apparently, Wiseau told the new actor “Peter left.  Now you are like Peter, but you are Steven.”

Which brings us to Tommy Wiseau: writer, director, producer and star of this beautiful freak show of a movie.  Wiseau’s enthusiasm and sheer ambition are ever apparent throughout the film, which may be why this film rises above the likes of Manos: The Hands of Fate or Troll 2 (previously my favorite “so bad its good” film before I witnessed the glory of The Room).  Confidence has never been so misplaced; Wiseau’s acting is beyond terrible, beyond the grasp of “Razzies-bad” even.

Tommy Wiseau: Man, Myth, Legend

His line delivery and rhythm is choppy and idiosyncratic to a point where Christopher Walken sounds normal by comparison.  Wiseau sounds like he’s in a race to see who can spit their lines out the fastest; trouble is, he’s the only one playing.

Wiseau’s persistent optimism in his own abilities is almost dickensian in nature; this guy is so proud of his work regardless of its quality.  And why shouldn’t he be?  This film has been on tour across North America, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom since its theatrical debut.  While people travel far and wide to laugh at the film and subsequent Q&A session, Wiseau laughs all the way to the bank.  That’s right, Wiseau has made quite a bit of money off of midnight audiences’ affinity for comical irony.

As far as cult icons go, Tommy Wiseau is like a bizarro Orson Welles, and The Room is his Citizen Kane.  Like its prestigious predecessor, The Room has gone beyond bad cinema into a realm in which its incoherence is only matched by its absolute confidence.  With all of its flaws and flubs presented proudly on the big screen for all to see, what should be an unwatchable mess somehow becomes a great comedy of errors.  And thus, a serendipitous midnight masterpiece is born.

“The Room” will be playing at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Hollywood on 27 February 2010 at 11:55pm.

Scene from \”The Room\”