Sooooo....let's just be honest. This is an average film. There are some cool ideas in this film and some good shots, but let's not fool ourselves. Anything Greg Sestero does will be compared to The Room, and so anything he does will be infinitely better. The case in point was Best F(r)iends. And honestly, I love this freaking title. It's low key kinda genius.
The story starts with Sestero being down on his luck as a homeless man in Los Angeles named Jon. A chance encounter with a strange man (expertly played by Tommy Wiseau) leads Jon into a strange underground of gold selling. You see, at least according to Sestero, there was a group of men that used a mortician to steal the old gold fillings of dead people. This happened during the recession of 2009 where gold skyrocketed in value. Anyway, Jon strikes a bizarre friendship with Harvey (Wiseau) as they start working together at the mortuary. Jon ultimately finds out Harvey has hundreds of teeth with gold fillings and talks Harvey into going into business with him, selling the gold on the black market and making some extra cash. All is going well until an obvious thing happens...a super hot girl gets between them.
We all know how this turns out. Harvey gets suspicious of the new girl Traci. You see Harvey is withholding some of the profits from Jon and Traci starts planting ideas in Jon's head that he is being cheated. It makes it even weirder that Harvey is hiding the excess funds in an ATM in his garage. So they hatch a plan to get rid of Harvey and it inexplicably works, making it look like Harvey committed suicide while the couple runs off with the ATM/safe.
The film is pretty basic in its make-up, but it is a fine showcase for Sestero. He has embraced his cult status as a D-list actor and while Best F(r)iends is not a masterpiece, it is also not a complete waste of time. I also liked the fact he specifically made the Harvey character a mirror of real life Wiseau, giving him a vehicle where he is not the butt of a joke but an actual participant in a film. I mean, this movie will be forgotten in the annals of history but if you like The Room and anything associated with it, then check this one out.
