Underrated Film: Four Rooms

In a topic I will call, "Underrated Film," I will introduce you to movies that are well written/acted/directed, but are fairly unknown for various reasons. In this post I will review...

Four Rooms:

Four Rooms is a movie based on a bell boy's first day on the job, on New Year's Eve night, at a hotel that used to be a hangout for Hollywood celebrities during the Golden Age. It's broken into four separate anthologies, which are directed by four different directors (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino), but have the common element of Tim Roth in each piece as the bell boy. This movie showcases the talent of these four new directors and meshes their styles together to make a chaotic, but fun movie.

In the first room, a coven of witches gather to resurrect their Bettie Page-esque goddess. Starring Lily Taylor, Alicia Witt, Ione Skye, Valerina Golino, and Madonna fashioning a black rubber dress during her Bedtime Stories time period. This piece is titled The Missing Ingredient, set in the Honeymoon suite, and directed by Allison Anders.

Out of the four rooms in this movie, the first one is the one that least fits in with the other three. Funny on it's on, it's a little out of place, but still enjoyable to watch. Tim Roth stands out the most in this piece, even with the little dialogue he has.



In the second room, Tim Roth's Ted character is mistaken for a man looking to rendezvous with a married woman played by Jennifer Beals. Walking into the room with a bucket of ice that was ordered, David Proval plays an angry husband of Beals who is waiting for Ted with a gun. Ted walks in to find Jennifer Beals gagged and tied to a chair. Most of the dialogue is between Proval and Roth, but even gagged, Beals is very expressive with her eyes, grunts, and facial mannerisms. She steals this portion of the movie called The Wrong Man set in room 404 and directed by Alexandre Rockwell. Out of the four rooms, this is the one with the best dialogue and even at that, Beals steals the scene in this room.

In the third room, directed by Robert Rodriguez, Rodriguez favorites act in this piece including Antonio Banderas and a brief cameo by Salma Hayek as a burlesque dancer seen on the television. Antonio Banderas plays a rich man who is going out for the night with his wife played by Tamlyn Tomita. With no baby sitter service available, Banderas enlists Ted to watch his two children. Reluctant, Ted agrees after an extremely large tip is given to him. The majority of the dialogue is between Ted and the two children, with Banderas and Tomita bookending the anthology. This anthology titled The Misbehavers set in room 309, provides the best laughs and the children are the scene stealers in this skit.

In between the third and forth rooms, Ted calls his boss at home only to reach a stoner played by Marisa Tomei. After a brief dialogue, Tomei hands the phone off to Ted's boss played by Kathy Griffin, whom convinces Ted not to quit. This part of the movie basically acts as a transition to the forth and final room.

The forth room, called The Man from Hollywood set in the penthouse of the movie, is directed and also stars Quentin Tarantino. Also making appearances is Bruce Willis, Jennifer Beals untied, and Paul Calderon. Quentin plays a famous director who makes a bet with a friend of his, on whether they can recreate a scene they saw in a movie. Ted, bringing the key components they ordered to attempt to recreate this scene, is also given a large amount of money to also act as a referee to judge whether this movie scene can be recreated. This anthology is the most clever of the four and and wraps up the four rooms nicely.

Four Rooms was released as an indie movie by Miramax, to showcase their four new directors. Definitely worth a watch, despite the lack of public awareness of this piece of cinema.