Four Rooms

So Four Rooms is a bit odd. It's an anthology film, featuring segments by two filmmakers I like, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and two that I've never heard of, whose names I've forgotten. It takes place in a hotel during New Year's Eve, and tells small stories in four different rooms all featuring Tim Roth as a strange bellhop who's new to the job. The two unknowns go first, and the segments tend to improve as the film goes on. You'd like a bit more consistency in this format, but at least getting better with time is superior to getting worse. Apparently Richard Linklater was supposed to do a fifth segment early on, but he pulled out before production started. That would have been interesting, but the movie really didn't need to be longer than it was.

The first segment features a coven of witches performing a ritual in their room, and the supernatural elements don't exactly jive with the rest of the film. All of the pieces are sort of different stylistically though, so it isn't a huge deal. It's sort of funny, although in the first two segments Roth's performance is just a bit too weird and inhuman, while Rodriguez makes him more angrily maniacal and Tarantino chills him out quite a bit. The second part has Roth caught up in an unusual roleplay with a husband and wife, which like the first is a bit hit or miss.

The third segment has Antonio Banderas, fresh off my favorite film of his (Desperado), as cool as ever taking his wife to a party and leaving Roth in charge of looking after their two kids in the hotel room. I liked this one a lot, as early on it captures the feeling of being a bored kid in an unfamiliar place as well as anything I've ever seen, and it starts getting really insane as it goes on, culminating in a highly unlikely and entertaining situation that wouldn't seem out of place in an R rated Warner Bros. cartoon, complete with appropriately half-witty, half-corny punchline.

I'm not sure if I preferred Rodriguez' segment or Tarantino's, which is very much in his traditional style, with a lot of long takes, extreme profanity, and unexpected violence played for laughs. Tarantino casts himself as an eccentric and successful film director, Marisa Tomei has a highly entertaining single scene on the phone with Roth, and Bruce Willis shows up in an uncredited role for fun. It has a strong mix of humor, rising tension, and humor again, topping the film off in a way I've come to expect from one of my favorite filmmakers. Four Rooms really isn't a great movie, but it's an interesting experiment with plenty of fun moments.