Just as with Dean’s various personalities, the characters in Roommate Wanted also function as vapid caricatures. An intentional choice that nicely supports the film’s absurdist direction, but one that also alienates the viewer, preventing us from forming real emotional connections with this crew of misfits.
Ricky and Lucy – the spacy couple who can’t keep their hands off each other – behave more like vehicles for delivering one-liners than actual human beings. Maria’s love interest, Kate, is supportive and seductive in a two-dimensional way. And the periphery characters – a silent and sluggish roommate, a hunky bachelor for Maria, and a boisterous gay couple – are all exaggerated versions of potentially real people. Luckily, White plays Maria with more nuance, offering a particularly tender performance during the more intimate scenes. But these moments, and White’s performance in general, are consistently interrupted by the screenplay, which insists on pulling the story in multiple directions.
“…White plays Maria with more nuance, offering a particularly tender performance…”
Ultimately, Roommate Wanted strives to offer audiences a delicately composed cocktail of seemingly incompatible thematic and stylistic ingredients. Unfortunately, it’s unable to pull off this kind of expert mixology, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering it’s an independent film with a low-budget, starring mostly inexperienced actors. So, while we can certainly forgive McCartney for over-muddling this rather complex tonal mix, we can’t change the fact that we’ve been served up a mostly inconsistent and lukewarm concoction. Although a biting political message is intended to be delivered, it gets lost somewhere within the cluttered material.
At best, then, Roommate Wanted is a fun film that packs a few laughs and some decent scares. And for some, its haphazard execution may just be the source of its charm.
"…its haphazard execution may just be the source of its charm."
