by Martin Unsworth
A cast of A-list stars and a quartet of then-hot, high-profile directors? What could possibly go wrong? Well, when it comes to Four Rooms, it seems quite a lot.
Set on New Year’s Eve, bellhop Ted (Tim Roth) is left alone to deal with the hotel and its motley array of guests. Four separate stories pan out over the night, with Ted at the centre. He has to deal with a coven of witches who want his semen, become an unwitting accomplice to a couple’s bizarre torture fantasy, babysit a pair of mischievous kids, and aid a twisted bet posed by a Hollywood star.
The four directors involved are Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging), Alexandre Rockwell (In the Soup), Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn), and Quentin Tarantino (well, you know…), who are all capable of much better than this. One of the major problems comes, surprisingly, from Tim Roth. He mugs his way through the scenes as if he were Jerry Lewis. This isn’t the kind of comedy Roth is best at. Steve Buscemi would have aced it. Of the stories, the opener, The Missing Ingredient, is perhaps the strongest. Featuring Madonna as the head witch, it sets a good tone that unfortunately doesn’t flow to the following entries. Rodriguez’s The Misbehavers is another standout, if only because the two children (Danny Verduzzo and Lana McKissack) are genuinely fabulous. The less said about Tarantino’s effort (based, as credited in the dialogue itself on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents), the better.
It’s something when the best part of a film is its opening title sequence (animated by the legendary Chuck Jones) in which one of Tarantino’s A Band Apart figures breaks from the logo for hijinks. It’s a Pink Panther-esque moment that is sadly never bettered by anything that follows. It’s an interesting experiment to combine several indie directors together for an anthology, and it’s a shame that it doesn’t work.
Australian company Via Vision has released Four Rooms on Blu-ray, and it looks great. The only extras are contemporary 4:3 featurettes that are interesting, but a little repetitive. If you’re a Tarantino completest, it’s worth picking up, but you’ll likely not watch it often!
Four Rooms is out now on Blu-ray from Via Vision.
