Movie Review #13: Four Rooms

Four Rooms (1995)
Director(s): Allison Anders, Alexander Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
Writer(s): Allison Anders, Alexander Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Tim Roth, Antonio Banderas, Madonna

Reading William Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part I. Watching Battleship Potemkin. Going for a jog. Facebooking with friends. Spending time with family. Doing laundry. Any one of these activities is more worthy of one's time than watching Four Rooms. This movie is bad. Beyond bad. I'm certain some of my readers will go watch this movie out of morbid curiosity, but I must say, for sake of the brain cells of humanity, do not watch Four Rooms under any circumstance.

Now, I know what the average reader is thinking. "Really, a Tarantino movie is really that bad? I've heard this movie is no Pulp Fiction, but it can't possibly be that terrible. I'll just see it for myself." That's the exact position I was in when I watched Four Rooms. I'd heard the film was a critical flop, that most Tarantino fans were unsatisfied, and that it really wasn't very good. I also knew the film is a series of vignettes that Tarantino himself didn't direct, but that he and three friends directed. I, however, ignored the warning signs, expecting that Tarantino's signature would automatically signal quality. I was wrong. I was dead wrong.

It's probably best if I go through each of the four vignettes one by one. The first, directed by Allison Anders, "The Main Ingredient" is about a coven of witches trying to resurrect one of their members. Tim Roth plays Ted, the bellhop who is our main protagonist. It turns out one witch, played by Madonna, has failed to gather the main ingredient for her portion of the incantation: semen. Thus, Madonna has to have sex with Ted in order for the coven to resurrect the witch.

It's hard to say anything good about this scene. The first thing the witches do in this scene is take their tops off. Why did they need to take their tops off? Was it essential to the spell? Apparently not, because some witches keep their tops on while others take them off. Was it because the director wanted them all to take their tops off and some actors flat-out refused? Did some of the actors realize that this scene had no purpose other than to titillate man-children who have no desire other than to stare at Madonna's rack? It's supposed to be a comedy, but someone forgot to write the jokes. The situation itself isn't intrinsically funny, so I'm not particularly amused when Madonna practically rapes Ted. Madonna gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen in any movie, making matters even worse. The dialogue is stinted. Worst of all, at the end of the day, there's no point to the scene at all. We don't see the witch get resurrected, so why did we bother even watching this?

In Alexander Rockwell's scene, "The Wrong Man," Ted stumbles into room 404, wherein he is forced to participate in a sex fantasy between a husband (David Proval) and his wife (Jennifer Beals). Both Ted and the audience get confused because we don't know what is real and what is part of the fantasy. But, instead of using proper dramatic irony in the fashion of a good movie, this scene just lets the dialogue sprawl all over the place. The jokes aren't funny, the swearing is wholly unnecessary, and any suspense is killed due to Tim Roth's spastic performance (more on that later). By the end of the scene, we are still questioning what is the point. The mystery is unengaging, and the scene falls flat.

The third, and best, scene is "The Misbehavers," in which a mobster, played by Antonio Banderas, blackmails Ted into babysitting his children. Hijinks ensue as the kids start drinking the champagne, accidentally turn on the soft-core porn channel, and even find the body of a dead prostitute in the box spring. The scene is clearly trying to replicate the cartoonish feel of a Looney Tunes short, but it forgets that the violence of those shorts works because the characters who get hurt are cartoons. On real people, the same degree of violence is just cruel and insensitive. While the scene is mostly reliant on dramatic irony and slapstick, only the former works. The disconnect between Ted and the kids is actually somewhat humorous. The slapstick is horrible. Tim Roth has the comedic timing of an eighth-season episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Robert Rodriguez may do the best job of the four, but he's still not holding a full deck.

One would hope the fourth scene, Tarantino's, would actually be funny. Sadly not. Ted finally travels to Quentin Tarantino's room in "The Man from Hollywood." Tarantino and his buddies are making a bet to see if one of Tarantino's friends is able to light a Zippo lighter 10 times in a row. If he wins, he gets a car. If he loses, he loses a finger. But, since Tarantino and his friend are... friends, they want Ted to chop off the finger should the bet be lost. Spoilers: He loses and Ted chops off the finger. Now that my readers know the ending, there is no reason why they should go out and see the movie.

This scene shows Tarantino at his worst. Some have accused him of being nothing more than a swear-happy, violence whore who spouts pop culture references for no good reason. Now, I reject this viewpoint for the vast majority of Tarantino's work, but, in this scene, the description is applicable. These swears have no point other than to be shouted. The pop culture references go nowhere. The violence is wholly mean-spirited. All would be forgiven if the scene were actually funny, but it is not. Just like the preceding three scenes, "The Man from Hollywood" is a waste of time.

The only thing connecting these four unfunny scenes together is Tim Roth as Ted. I will be the first to say that Four Rooms might actually have worked had someone else played Ted. Tim Roth squirms around the scenery like a monkey high on Quaaludes. The Ted character is intrinsically cocky and arrogant, but Tim Roth tries as hard as he can to make Ted the least likable character in the entire movie. I understand the reasoning: if we dislike Ted, we will think his various forms of punishment throughout the movie are deserved. But even the smuggest ***hole does not deserve to be held at gunpoint against his will, stabbed in the leg with a dirty needle, and, need we forget, raped. Instead, we feel bad for the poor sap when he is hurting but hate him whenever he is feeling fine. Also, it would help if Tim Roth was funny. He is not.

Four Rooms is an inelegant, unfunny, piece of trash masquerading itself as a comedy from the great modern masters. Four Rooms is more akin to Grown-Ups 2 than to Pulp Fiction. This is not a painstakingly edited and crafted film; this is a group of friends putting random antics on film expecting money for it. It is a rare thing for a film to disgust me as much as Four Rooms did. It's not the worst film I've ever seen, but it certainly makes the top ten. It is only in the interest of good taste that this entire review was not a string of curse words and the word "hate" repeated over and over again. In one sentence: Four Rooms sucks.

Recommendation: None. No one should see this movie. No one.

I give Four Rooms 0.5 stars out of 10.