So I watched
Best F(r)iends, Volumes 1 and 2 this past weekend. And hoo boy, where do I even start? I have no idea how I'd even approach writing a review, but I feel oddly compelled to write something, so I'll summarize it instead. Unmarked spoilers ahead, but I have a sneaking suspicion that won't be an issue.
Starring Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero, of
The Room fame infamy, it's about what you can expect. Sestero wrote it, so while it's not quite as badly written as
The Room was, it's not exactly good. He introduces and drops subplots just as much as
The Room ever did. More on that later
Wiseau plays Harvey, a mortician who among other things, removes the gold teeth from the bodies he's preparing, and keeps them as souvenirs. He's apparently being doing this for years, because he has boxes upon boxes of them. Meticulously labeled.
He also has an odd obsession with
The Black Dahlia murder that never really gets expanded on properly. He was her lover, perhaps? It's unclear
Sestero plays Jon, a homeless drifter, who ends up working for Harvey by random happenstance. He quickly comes across the teeth, and gets the idea to sell them when he sees an ad in a paper offering to buy dental gold. When he shows the dentist a bag of human teeth, rather than call the cops, he puts Jon in touch with a black market contact he conveniently has. Later, when the black market contact shows up, he asks Harvey if he's D.B. Cooper, which made me think of
this comic
Around the same time, Jon meets a bartender, Traci, and they immediately hit it off. They quickly move in together, and when she finds a wad of cash in his bag one day, she confronts him and he tells her the story. She accepts it without too much issue, all things considered. Cut to Harvey buying himself an $80k car, despite telling Jon that the money is not to be touched. Jon wants to split the money as agreed, Harvey refuses, because he's convinced that Traci is a gold digger. Shortly after, Jon eavesdrops on a meeting between Harvey and "Malmo", who appears to be an enforcer of some type, telling Harvey he has just a few days to pay him an installment of $300,000. By the way, this is Malmo:
Days later, I still laugh when I think about that picture.
Jon and Traci hatch a plan to get the money, which at this point is approximately $2 million: Harvey is a huge Rolling Stones fan, and his birthday is just around the corner, so they create counterfeit tickets to a concert they're putting on as a way to get him out of the way, get him blackout drunk, steal his keys, ditch him, and then go back to steal the money. They justify it to themselves as being ok, because they think Harvey intends to spend it all paying Malmo, and also on legal fees because he has pending necrophilia charges - this subplot is immediately dropped.
They really took that term incredibly loosely.
Anyhow, en route, Harvey gets out of the car to stretch his legs, and Jon eventually follows. The end up on the edge of a cliff, and Harvey reveals that he knows the concert is fake - the venue was demolished years prior. Harvey again warns Jon that Traci is only interested in the money. Jon asks Harvey about Malmo and the $300k, and Harvey just laughs. The two men fight, and Harvey falls off the cliff during the struggle.
End Volume 1.
Before I go into Volume 2, I feel it prudent to mention that it was originally filmed as one movie, but they decided to split it into two after the fact - probably for the best, because 2 is a complete shift in tone.
Moving on. Volume 2.
Traci meets up with Jon, and they return together to retrieve the safe, but find themselves unable to open it, as it turns out Jon stole the wrong set of keys from Harvey. Fortunately, Traci has an uncle in Arizona who might be able to help, so they head there. The uncle is barely a real person; almost all of his dialogue is just one-liners. Anyhow, they arrive at his house, and he fixes Jon a drink. Just Jon. None for Traci
As it turns out, he is unable to get the safe open, but there's a locksmith in town who can probably help. The already shady locksmith turns out to be crooked, and calls in his apprentice because he's convinced the safe has a sizable sum they can steal. He pulls a gun on the three, and his apprentice arrives. The apprentice also realizes he has some kind of axe to grind with Traci. He drags her off and is about to kill her, when a mysterious person, looking like a low-rent Knight Templar
appears, and kills both the locksmith and his apprentice, before disappearing.
But the uncle turns out to be corrupt too! And Traci is in cahoots! And they're banging each other! (I really hope him being her uncle was a lie, as an aside). The uncle takes Jon into the hills to kill him, as he has with numerous other fake boyfriends of Traci's, but the mysterious Knight Templar returns, kills the uncle, and saves Jon. The Templar turns out to be Harvey, not dead after all! Who could have ever guessed? Reunited at last, Harvey and Jon confront Traci, who tries to say she's just as much a victim, and was coerced into the plan, but Jon just walks away.
We get a brief monologue from Harvey and a montage, and then the two pull up to a house in the suburbs, but uh oh - Malmo is there! But it's ok, because it turns out he's a real estate agent, and the enforcer bit from before was just them ensuring that Jon wouldn't learn the $300k was really for a house for Jon. Isn't that so nice? But then, the locksmith's apprentice drives up on his motorcyle, presumably out for revenge. Cut to credits. Part 3 incoming?
And that is Best F(r)iends. I simultaneously regret everything and nothing about it. Just a few other random highlights and observations, and then I think my work here is done.
- Harvey and Jon homage The Room, such as throwing a basketball back and forth much like the numerous scenes of doing so with a football
- Harvey has a breakdown not unlike the infamous "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA" scene
- At one point, Jon and Traci stop in at a Bed & Breakfast, and the proprietor randomly calls them "bitches"
- Just as pictures of spoons were randomly present in The Room, lemons are randomly present throughout the movie
- "Jon, when you end up in jail, I cannot rescue you. The only thing I can do, I can send you a few oranges".... what?
- The uncle takes a phone call in the middle of a gunfight! And orders the steak fajitas for his flight to the Caymans, where he and Traci had planned to flee
- Wiseau playing basketball is hilarious. He clearly does not know how to play
