“Four Rooms” is a collection of short films set in a fading Hollywood hotel directed by four different independent filmmakers with the main link being that they all feature Ted the Bellhop played by Tim Roth (“Reservoir Dogs”, “The Incredible Hulk”). The shorts, which are all meant to be comedies in some form or another, vary in quality with one being decent, one being near unwatchable and two that are in the middle.
The Missing Ingredient – 1 star
The first is directed by Allison Anders (“Grace of My Heart”) and really isn’t a film in any usual sense of the word and is it relies solely on the presence of nudity to sell you the product and completely abandons any attempt at creating remotely good characters and/or dialog.
In “The Missing Ingredient” a coven of witches including one played by Madonna (“Evita”, “A League of Their Own”) have all gathered in a hotel room to revive a witch goddess that has been turned to stone as they each bring gifts. One witch however admits she does not have the seamen from a man required to break the curse and thus is given one hour to collect some, thus Ted the Bellhop becomes their target.
The witches in this film are beyond boring and have nothing interesting to say. Some wear revealing clothes such as Madonna in a tight, leather outfit and others are completely naked as they stand around moaning and chanting; it doesn’t matter if you’re straight or not as you can’t sit there and defend a film that bases itself on so little because really it is just an excuse for women to be undressed. Tim Roth comes across as severely weak here but the material is very poor.
“The Missing Ingredient” is by far the worst segment in this entire experience as it seems like some poor sitcom merged with a sexually explicit film. It also technically is the worst film in the package as there are no clever camera-angles or anything of that nature. For a movie that is intended to make you laugh it would serve much better at getting people aroused, that is if they haven’t turned it off after a few dreary minutes; thankfully though the other shorts here are a lot better than this.
The Wrong Man – 3 ½ stars
If you managed to stomach or just skip the first section of the film then you’ll find yourself sitting through “The Wrong Man” directed by Alexandre Rockwell (“In The Soup”) and I think it is the best part of this film. It’s confusing but done with such an intense and bizarre energy that I actually enjoyed it.
In this segment, Ted the Bellhop, whose self-despised full name is revealed to be Theodore, walks into a room where a man named Sigfried (David Proval “Mean Streets”) is holding his tied up wife Angela (Jennifer Beals “Flashdance”) at gunpoint. Ted gets accused of sleeping with Angela, just about every single nickname for male genitals is said and there is a good twist.
Tim Roth proves to be much better here as he’s given more to do and actually delivers a few laughs here and there. David Proval and Jennifer Beals are both good as the couple and everybody here is just really on edge and throughout the short the pressure on all of them just keeps building until it just explodes. It’s intriguing to see so few people carry the whole event but I’m glad it was a short as this isn’t a situation that could have been dragged out for much longer.
“The Wrong Man” features a truly excellent shot as we see Ted hanging out of a window but we see both his lower body on the inside and his upper on the outside simultaneously; it’s very creative. The performances are good because they work despite not having the best of dialog, there are a few laughs thrown in and I have to say the twist is decent as well so I’d definitely say this is the best volume out of the four, which is a bit of a shame as it isn’t amazing or anything like that.
The Misbehavers – 2 stars
The third item “Four Rooms” has to offer is “The Misbehavers” directed by Robert Rodriguez (“Machete”, “Sin City”). It isn’t particularly funny as the children in it are so young and the things that happen to them are so cruel that I’d at least find something heavily wrong with me for enjoying this one and that’s a bit of a shame as there is some potential here with the adult performers.
In “The Misbehavers”, Antonio Banderas, who worked with the director on “Desperado”, stars as a guy credited similar as ‘Man’; he gets Ted to babysit for his two unruly children while he takes his wife out on the town. While Banderas creates some light chuckles and Roth provides a kind-of creepiness, the children get up to things that they just shouldn’t.
Banderas is pretty good when he holds his wife in his arms and kicks the button in a lift to send it down to the ground floor; I also like his macho attitude throughout. Ted comes across as sympathetic in the first two segments but in this one he showcases a nasty side that proves to be entertaining. The children are quite young, one is definitely younger than ten, and they show-off a sick foot fetish (similar to the one in Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn”), find a drug-taker’s needle, swear, are threatened with violence, smoke, drink, watch inappropriate dancers and find a corpse; it’s all too much for it to be amusing.
“The Misbehavers” has some good parts, courtesy of the grown-ups, but the kids, who really are the heart of the short, don’t provide any laughs as they are stuck in a situation that is far too mature for them. I wish Rodriguez could have toned things down and made something more family-friendly because then it would have worked and would have handed us a more enjoyable experience that would have felt even more different from the other segments, making it truly unique.
The Man From Hollywood – 2 ½ stars
The final short we get is “The Man From Hollywood” directed by and starring Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”, “Jackie Brown”), who is easily the most famous of the four directors. This section is a disappointing finale in a lot of respects and that is because I had such high expectations of Tarantino and while it does feel like his other work, it just never reaches the same sort of level.
In this one, Ted’s final endurance challenge of the night as it seems is to tend to eccentric moviemaker Chester (Tarantino). Everybody in the room gets drinking and talking about old movies when we find out there is dare taken from a Alfred Hitchcock tv show episode where a man is going to try and light his lighter ten times in a row, if he wins he gets a retro car but if he loses then he gets his little finger sliced off.
Tarantino stars as basically what I imagine the real-life Tarantino to be like: he swears like no tomorrow, goes on about obscure old movies, gets drunk and makes dumb dares. Ted the Bellhop is very bland here, almost as bland as in “The Missing Ingredient”, which I found to be a real shame after the last two pieces made him a reasonably good character. Bruce Willis (“Die Hard”) is in it and he’s awful.
I like how this one is filmed very much and I think the Tarantino performance is good but everything else is a bit sloppy such as it contains lots of fast dialog but isn’t as interesting as in many of the man’s other pictures. It’s not a bad effort but feels like the opening scenes of Tarantino movie and not a full experience and thus is disposable. It’s pretty funny to think that Tarantino is such a controversial filmmaker and his contribution to “Four Rooms” is arguably the tamest.
“Four Rooms” is a mixed bag as I liked the second part, the final was mediocre, the third was disappointing and the starter should be avoided. I like the cartoon intro that has a funny “Reservoir Dogs” joke and is not too dissimilar to the animated sequences in the “Pink Panther” movies, the shame is that this is one of the best additions to the whole film. In conclusion it is a messy time, especially with the inconsistency of the quality of Ted the Bellhop character.