Hypothetically: Say you haven’t seen The Room and know very little about it. Should you still go see The Disaster Artist? Absolutely. Without a doubt.

The Room has been called the Citizen Kane of bad movies. Released on June 27, 2003, it has had regular weekly screenings every weekend since then and has been the subject of an award-winning book written by one of its stars. People have spent 14 years loving and laughing at this strange film.

It’s a movie that most people probably haven’t seen. You may even be one of them.

Related: Already a big fan of The Room? Check out which quotes we named as the best of the whole movie! (And keep your stupid comments in your pocket!)

So why in the world would you spend your hard-earned money and valuable time seeing a film about the making of a movie you’ve never seen?

Because as an avid fan and lover of The Room (and as someone who has waited two years for this film to come out), I can say with confidence that even people who haven’t seen this interesting feat of filmmaking will thoroughly enjoy James Franco and Seth Rogan’s The Disaster Artist.

Here’s why.

It’s HILARIOUS

The Disaster Artist is hilarious in its own right, not only in its connection to The Room. While there are of course jokes and turns of phrase in the dialogue that fans of The Room will howl with laughter over, it’s not a gatekeeping movie. The film develops its characters and their situations so well that you don’t have to have any knowledge of Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece to laugh your ass off.

You’ll be surrounded by an audience that’s looking to love and enjoy the movie

In my screening, I’d say about 95% of the people were fans of The Room and it was amazing. Because we’re all used to audience participation screenings, the crowd in my theater cheered, laughed, clapped, hooted, and hollered often, which made the movie that much better. There was just so much love in my theater and, even if your theater isn’t 95% filled with Tommy fans, you’ll definitely feel it too.

There are so many great stars in this movie

James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogan, Josh Hutcherson, Zac Efron, Bryan Cranston… The cast list for The Disaster Artist is insane. So many of your favorite stars and comedians are in this movie. Not only that, but you can tell that they genuinely want to be in it and that they’re excited about it. Why? Because they all love The Room.

The Disaster Artist is one of those movies where there’s always a fun cameo or hilarious moment with your favorite stars around each corner. Yes, it’s sometimes hard to see the actors as their characters instead of just their actors, but that’s strangely really on par with the movie. The subject is so ridiculous (even though it’s true) that seeing these actors as the actors just playing characters actually fits in with the film’s atmosphere.

The actors are SO GOOD

I’ll admit it: For a lot of The Disaster Artist, I forgot that I was watching James Franco playing Tommy Wiseau. I thought I was just watching Tommy be Tommy. Franco is THAT good.

While the other actors don’t really disappear into their characters (I’m looking at you Josh Hutcherson and that crazy animal on your head), they’re good in a different way. They’re so goofy and committed to their characters that they add to the whole “heartwarmingly ridiculous” atmosphere of the movie. There’s truly not a weak one in the bunch.

It’s a heartwarming tale of friendship and the American dream

Honestly. Who doesn’t love a good story about individuals coming together and striving to achieve the “American dream”? You’ll laugh, you’ll cry (because you’re laughing so hard), you’ll feel your heart swell. Tommy and Greg will win you over. I promise.

The story is *almost* too ridiculous to be true

You seriously may not believe that the story behind The Room is real. Everything, from the way Tommy and Greg meet and become friends to how they cast their film to the conditions on the set, is insane and illogical. It shouldn’t have worked. It honestly mostly didn’t. But it’s the parts of what happened that made everything actually work that make this story worthwhile.

It’s the Oscar bait-iest Oscar bait of all time

I kind of hate to include this point because I don’t like the idea of denoting films as “Oscar bait,” but let’s review the facts about what kinds of movies the Academy loves:

Things get really meta when you realize that some of these aspects that the Academy loves have almost Inception-like qualities with The Disaster Artist. When The Disaster Artist performs well and reels in all the nominations, the film’s underdog subjects, who are VERY real people and underdogs IRL, will finally get the recognition they so sorely wanted.

*Mind blown*

But I digress…

Basically, this movie is going to get Oscar buzz and every other award show buzz. James Franco has already started winning awards for his performance. If you’re like me and you make it a personal challenge to see all of the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars (or if you just like seeing films that everyone loves and deem quality), you’ll need to see The Disaster Artist at some point.

You get to see James Franco’s butt

I mean, you get to see a lot (A LOT) more than that, but, I mean he’s got a pretty fine ass. NGL.

It will make you want to see ‘The Room’ and read ‘The Disaster Artist’

This is a slightly selfish point on my end just because I want everyone to have experienced all that The Room has to offer (including the full story behind it). I oddly think it would make the world a slightly better place.

The Disaster Artist works perfectly as a self-contained story, but there’s no way that it can give you everything you want or need to know in so short a run time. There’s so much more to the behind-the-scenes craziness than what you saw in the movie. So, so much. Once you see The Disaster Artist, you’re going to want to know everything.

Plus, after seeing all of the scenes from The Room that James Franco & co. recreated and getting so many teases about the movie, I’d be really surprised if you weren’t jonesing to watch The Room to try to understand more of what was going on in the movie (even though *spoiler alert* you won’t find much logic there).

tldr; Even if you’ve never seen The Room, you’re sure to have a blast seeing The Disaster Artist. Don’t question it. Just go.

Related: ‘The Disaster Artist’ movie review: More than just a comedy