The Roommate (Review)

Guarantee a million guys just said "I'll take my chances" in unison.

The Roommate elicited only two thoughts during the entire 90 minute running time; the first is that regardless of the situation both leads Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester look just fabulous, whether it’s early morning, late at night, at a party, being assaulted or after a long jogging session neither gal has even a hair out of place.

The second thought was WHY THE FUCK AM I WATCHING THIS DROSS???

(That one came up a lot.)

Sara (Minka) and Rebecca (Meester) are first year college students who share a room and a love of fashion. Once perfect strangers, within a few days of cohabiting they morph into a combined 70 kg of personality and charisma free pretty.

The film practically exhausts itself lining up a small village full of targets for the Single White Female clone to take down. There’s a creepy teacher, various friends, a vacuous boyfriend – even a kitty-cat – all there to steal minutes and build illogical animosity.

(And all the while backed by all the IQ rotting, patience testing alterna-music you can’t handle.)

Like an impeccably dressed, perfect skin version of a pasty Japanese Grudge ghost she’s always there in the corner, watching menacingly but never seen. Then one throwaway “I always wanted a sister” later and we are all cordially invited to a Britney head shaving party where everyone gets their unjust desserts – and we the audience wonder just how we made such a huge error of judgment by grabbing this off the DVD store shelf.

The only semi-amusing device I could come up with was predicting her thoughts – loudly and frequently – much to the constant annoyance of my wife, so that even dull filler lines like “That dress looks great on you” became suffixed by “Gee I wonder how it will look in the closed CASKET AFTER I TAKEASHARPKNIFETOYOURFACE!”

Alas even this became tired and annoying shortly after a while, though I must admit more rapidly for my wife…

I have long been of the opinion that there are too many quote-unquote ‘celebrities’ in Hollywood. With dozens of channels, hundreds of TV shows and probably thousands of aspiring stars and starlets all vying for the same 20 Mega-Star positions dominated by the perennial names lousy projects like this are inevitable.

To remedy this maybe once a year we demote one Mega-Star and open up a new position, and cull off a couple hundred of the obviously less talented goits hanging around in films like this wasting all of our time. Because we haven’t done it before we might need one big cleanout initially, but as a quick example might I suggest for starters; Cruise out. Clive Owen in.

Sorry for the digression, I guess I’m just pissed that I didn’t see this one in advance despite the numerous warning signs.

Final Rating – 4.5 / 10. All the boring and predictable bits that these films demand, without the equally predictable nudity and violence required to make them momentarily interesting.

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
This entry was posted in Crappy Movies, Film, Movie Reviews, The 7th Level of Suck. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.