Four Rooms * (1995, Tim Roth, Bruce Willis, Quentin Tarantino, Jennifer Beals, Paul Calderon, Salma Hayek, Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Marisa Tomei) – Classic Movie Review 3056

Tim Roth plays an unlikely bellboy visiting the title’s four hotel rooms in this lacklustre 1995 portmanteau movie comedy, showing clearly why these kinds of films are out of fashion. Even good directors, it seems, have no idea how to make them. Despite the trendy names, more or less forget it. Admittedly, though, the movie’s farcical physical comedy and daft sight gags are very much to taste.

The interlocking slapstick-toned tales take place on New Year’s Eve in bellboy Ted (Roth)’s fading former grand old Hollywood hotel, the Mon Signor, now fallen on hard times. The stories are: The Missing Ingredients, The Wrong Man, The Misbehavers, and The Man from Hollywood. And the directors are: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders, and Alexandre Rockwell.

The third Robert Rodriguez-directed episode in which Ted foolishly agrees to watch a gangster’s kids for him while he’s away and the two misbehaving children are left to wreak havoc by their parents is the best of the bunch and the film’s possible saving grace.

In the others, he’s asked to help out a coven of witches in the Honeymoon Suite on his first night on the job. Then he delivers ice to the wrong room and ends up in a domestic argument, while he finishes off the night by refereeing a wager.

‘From the makers of Pulp Fiction’ is a big come-on attraction. And the cast might be a magnet, too: Antonio Banderas, Jennifer Beals, Paul Calderon, Sammi Davis, Amanda de Cadenet, Valeria Golino, Cathy Griffin, Madonna, Marc Lawrence, David Proval, Ione Skye, Quentin Tarantino, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Salma Hayek, Bruce Willis, Tamlyn Tomita and Alicia Witt.

In any case, it’s certainly one for curio corner.

It was filmed at the Chateau Marmont, 8221 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3056

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