The Worst Film Ever

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Though an uneven effort, this flick is a dark, quirky gem-in-the-rough, not unlike the agates that don't look like much when you pick them up at Little Girl's Point, but turn out rather stunning after a week in the tumbler. In order to have ANY memory of this film after seeing it, one must skip the crappy extras on the DVD or the last remnant of good feeling toward the feature likely will be canceled out. The patronizing and absurdly repetitious cast & crew interviews last an endless 24 minutes, consisting of these people donning cheap Groucho masks (a gambit that's old in 24 seconds!) and asking each other the same sophomoric handful of questions over and over and over again. The only interesting tidbit to emerge here is that Lucky McKee wrote the first draft of the script in three days when he was a college student. "Alternate cast outtakes" is not much better. These 13 minutes are divided almost equally between two other actors (besides McKee) in the title role of Roman; they both suck. The earlier 2002 aborted effort with Kevin Ford is the more interesting (and, unfortunately, the second presented)--mostly because of background music and a nude chick, neither of which are present in the final 2006 version. It's best to just skip these miserable add-ons, in order to leave the mundane Pirandelloism of the feature's final frames unsullied in the mind's eye. Reinforcing the parting images is Kara and Boyd Jacobson's rendition of the haunting lost youth ditty "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" over the closing credits, which strongly invites an allegorical interpretation of this whole effort. Like the ephemeral playmates in this bittersweet tune, is it not possible that both "Isis" and Eva are figments of Roman's imagination; competing dream girls on par with Roman's two-minute fantasy about a flowery Earth mother and the alternate FLASHDANCE-styled welder that sets the tone for the movie six minutes in? Throughout the film, Roman is totally inarticulate with his coworkers, his landlord, and his neighbors. Yet he is philosophically verbose with the two ladies. Perhaps he is so taciturn with real people because his interior dialogs drown them out. No doubt the inspiration for this script was the Nineteenth Century Georg Buchner play WOYZECK, which I had to read at the same age McKee was when he wrote this script. An army doctor forces Mr. Woyzeck onto an all-pea diet, which soon causes him to flip out and kill his wife. In McKee's movie, a girl (real or not) entices Roman onto an all-pork & beans diet (cases of the stuff are the main furnishing of his efficiency), with similar murderous results (real or not). Maybe it's time to check on the safety of Morgan Spurlock's significant other, given his all-McDonald's diet?

Jeez...apparently, Lucky McKee can do no wrong. Like an album by an indie artist buried under a pile of Top 40 junk, it is often hard to remember that the horror genre DOES have an existence outside of Rob Zombie, Eli Roth, and the "Saw" franchise. But is "Roman" really a horror film? McKee himself has found the tag questionable, as his films are more about relationships than anything else. "Roman," directed by actress Angela Bettis, is a gender reversal on McKee's breakout debut, "May" (in which Bettis starred), but blossoms into yet another singularly unique entity. Roman (McKee, who also scripted) is a remote, shy welder who leads a lonely existence; his daily excitement comes from sitting in front of his apartment window as an anonymous, beautiful girl (Kristen Bell) walks by; when the duo finally hook up, it meets an unexpected end. While McKee's hangdog expression can be overdone at times, he nails the nuances of a tormented, lovelorn guy, which becomes even more complex when Eva (the beautiful Nectar Rose), a foliage-wearing artist, enters his life. The beauty of watching "Roman" unravel is this awareness of relationship mechanics--seldom does character motivation feel contrived, nor does it come off with a sanitized "Hollywood" feel (the use of DV further helps this). As with "May," McKee finds ways to make potential shock-value scenes play with a tenderness (or humor) that is even more effective. And maybe as a titular nod to Polanski, the film bears a similarity to that director's tales of paranoid and/or sexually confused apartment-dwellers trying to sustain a day-to-day existence without (literally) killing someone. "Roman" is a wonderful film, sure to be on my "Best of 2007" list (even though it came out last year).

I watched and watched and kept thinking 'i'll give it ten more minutes'. The film is obviously low budget, (maybe more financial interest may have hurried it along a bit). The lead actor is great, he plays the role great, definitely the type of guy you'd avoid. However,he sits in his apartment, and he sits, and he sits, and he sits, and he goes to work, and then home, and then work and then home....get the point. There are people out there like that, and the story line is menacing, but for heavens sake... hurry it along a bit. Surely in the pre-release stage, someone must have started fidgeting in the first ten minutes and said to the producer, 'shall we go back and tweak it to make it more interesting?' I can only assume that the response was...'too late the money's ran out' Enough said, go shopping instead!

Roman would have made an excellent short film, if it was made outside of Hollywood, by people who knew nothing about film. Oh, wait, did I say film? I meant video. Strangely there is no attempt to escape the camcorder look and scratchy open mic sound. The compression on the incidental sound effects (cars passing, doors closing, etc.) has such an irritating level of attack... I mean... yuck. The lack of attention to technical details is just atrocious. The lighting is two-dimensional, the blocking is repetitive and is all angled either too low or too high.In the sense of story, there is potential. You don't, unfortunately, get the sense that Roman is time bomb where 'the girl' is concerned, which is unfortunate. His big mistake with the girl really has no rhyme or reason. I mean this was shot on video folks, what was stopping you from getting enough takes to reach an appropriate level of intensity. Even Kristin Bell was operating well below her A-Game in this pivotal scene.