Can a single performance destroy a potentially good movie? You bet. And 1995's Four Rooms is living proof. It's a mess of a picture with what I can only describe as an imploded performance by Tim Roth at its front and centre. How bad is Roth? I'm thinking worse than Adam Sandler and almost hitting the Tom Green turf. You can't hit much lower than that.
Four Rooms came out on the coattails of Pulp Fiction's success, a project that would most likely never have been okayed if it didn't have two big names attached to the project: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Even then, the pitch might not have landed had it not been for the fact that every actor in Hollywood was itching to work with the two directors. The result is an uneven film that boasts a lot of big names, but obviously wasn't made with the grandest of confidence. Several actors go uncredited, and those that are credited probably wish they never were.
Ted the Bellboy (Roth) is tending to a hotel on New Year's Eve all by his lonesome. Throughout the night, he has four bizarre experiences in four separate rooms. The first stop is the honeymoon suite, where a coven of witches needs a special male fluid for their large cauldron. The second room is occupied by David Proval and Jennifer Beals. They are playing some kind of weird mindgame with each other, but there's no point in even trying to figure out what they're talking about. This scene is interminable. The third room features Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita as parents of some misbehaving children (Lana McKissack and Danny Veruzco, both very funny). Here, Roth is assigned to babysit them and the results are disastrous but curiously hilarious. The last room is the penthouse, where Roth must decide if he will accept a strange proposition involving a hatchet, a cutting board, and a lighter.
The gimmick behind Four Rooms is that the four segments have been written and directed by different, energetic filmmakers. Allison Anders does the first one, Alexandre Rockwell the second, Rodriguez the third and Tarantino the fourth. Unfortunately, the material itself is weak, so even when the direction shows promise, one need only remember that the director is also the writer, and the disappointment is even bigger. There are a couple of good performances; one by Bruce Willis as a volatile, drunk businessmen, the other by Marisa Tomei as a stoner who seems to answer every question with a question. As I said though, the real sinking stone is Roth as the flustering bellboy. Not only is he wrong for the part on many, many levels, but he is ingratiatingly over-the-top (even when he is supposedly subdued) and he sucks the energy out of every scene he's in.
I actually own a copy of this movie, but don't let that confession fool you -- it was intentionally left behind in my apartment a few years back. Time hasn't been kind to it, but after watching it again recently, time would certainly have no reason to.
