Latex Movie Review - Four Rooms

In the early '90s independent movies were suddenly getting a lot of attention, beginning with 1989's Sex, Lies and Videotape which had a budget of $1 million and grossed $24 million at the box office. Up until that point Siskel and Ebert were the only ones mentioning the indies, practically begging their viewers to give these films a chance. Now Entertainment Tonight and People Magazine were finally following the indie scene, making stars of their directors. In 1995 five prominent indie directors banded together on the same movie to be called Five Rooms. Allison Anders had won the 1992 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Gas Food Lodging and critical praise for Mi Vida Loca, earning her a Genius Grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Alexandre Rockwell gained notoriety and critical praise for his film In the Soup. Robert Rodriguez, who would go on to direct the Spy Kids and Sin City franchises, was at the time gaining a lot of attention for his action movie El Mariachi which was shot on an amazing $7,000 budget. But the biggest name attached to the Five Rooms project was Quentin Tarantino who had not only directed the indie favorite Reservoir Dogs, but Pulp Fiction which went on to gross over $100 million at the box office, won several critics awards for best picture and gain seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Pulp Fiction was the great breakout success story of independent films and Five Rooms was to be Quentin's follow up. A fifth director, Richard Linklater of Slacker and Dazed and Confused, backed out of the project at the last minute, and the movie was re-dubbed Four Rooms.

The premise of the movie was simple. Each director would get his own segment to write and direct. The movie would be about a former grand hotel which at one time was where the movie stars stayed, but in recent years has become a run down dump. The star of the movie is Tim Roth who plays what appears to be the hotel's only remaining employee, a bellhop named Ted. In each segment of the movie Ted visits a different room on what is presumably New Years Eve and gets involved with a different guest. Each room actually represents a different movie of varying quality. Much like watching four episodes of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories back to back the result is going from one degree of quality to another, where one episode is tolerable, another unwatchable, and maybe one is fully entertaining. One gets the feeling that none of the directors involved with this project were given enough time or freedom to properly do their respective segments, and one suspects that they all treated this project as a potboiler to raise money for their own individual projects. The end result is an overall extremely disappointing film considering the combined raw talent that went into making it. Perhaps the movie's biggest drawback is the performance of Tim Roth as the bellhop Ted. Roth goes from channeling Jerry Lewis to channeling Jaques Tati to channeling Charlie Chaplin to channeling Bobcat Goldthwait and then back to Lewis. More often than not his performance seems forced rather than natural, posing and stumbling on cue. Roth seems to have based his performance on every single physical comedian who ever existed, everyone from Buster Keaton to Rik Mayall, without having the ability to settle on one persona. It did not help that he would be working for four different directors, each who probably had their own idea as to what the persona of Ted would be.

The first film in this compilation is called Honeymoon Suit with the subtitle The Missing Ingredient. Allison Anders came up with a story with a back story. Forty years earlier in the same room a powerful witch was in the same room on her honeymoon when she was somehow cursed, turning her into a stone and her husband into a goldfish. Ever since that day a coven of witches have been returning to the same room each year to attempt to reverse the curse and free the queen witch ( who they also refer to as the Goddess ) from her stone prison. Five witches ( Ione Skye, Sammi Davis, Lili Taylor, Valeria Golino and Madonna ) have just entered the room, along with a witch in training ( Alicai Witt ) and commence with a ceremony where each adds some sort of fluid to the room's cauldron/hot tub. The joke here is that Ione Skye was suppose to supply sperm removed from a virgin but announces that she was unable to because during the act of collecting it she accidentally swallowed. The other witches tell her that she has to find a new supply of sperm, and fast. Enter Ted the bellhop, obviously still a virgin. An unusually prudish Ted refuses to make love with a now topless Skye until she somehow hexes him with beams that emit from her eyes. The whole segment had lead up to this moment and for some odd reason Anders chooses to go to a fadeout and cut back to the couple after they have apparently made love in the cauldron. While there was nothing wrong with the premise of Anders' segment, she was unable to flesh it out with any ideas and it went nowhere. Anders apparently couldn't even come up with an ending. While all the other segments in this movie end with an appropriate joke The Missing Ingredient simply ends with the queen witch rising up out of the cauldron in an anticlimactic scene that simply fades out. So much for the genius grant.

The next segment titled Room 404 and subtitled The Wrong Man is yet another mess. Not as bad as the first segment it is still a premise that seems to go nowhere. A group of drunks at a party order more ice and give Ted the wrong room number. This sends Ted to the wrong room where he walks in on an angry man with a gun who has bound and gaged his wife and is waiting for her lover to show up, a lover who just happens to also be named Ted. The Wrong Man becomes a psychological thriller, but as if it had been a remake of a Ren and Stimpy script. The closing gag here happens after Ted finally gets away and runs into the other Ted who is looking for room 404 and mentions that he had gone to the wrong room and spent the past hour at a party. And that is as funny as the segment gets.

The third segment, Room 309 subtitled The Misbehavers, is directed by Robert Rodriguez, and is the standout best story in the movie. One could call this the direct predecessor to Spy Kids. Antonio Banderas plays the father of two children who he wants to leave in their hotel room by themselves while he and his wife celebrate the New Year at a party. Banderas pays Ted $500 to watch his kids which involves only having to check on them every half hour and make sure that they are in bed before midnight. Predictably the kids turn out to be mischief makers who cause Ted all sorts of trouble. While this is the film's stand out good segment, once again you can't help but feel Rodriguez could have gone a lot further with the premise.

The final segment directed by Quentin Tarantino is called Penthouse and subtitled The Man From Hollywood. If you were expecting Tarantino to have written and directed the best segment of the film then you will be disappointed. There is some entertainment value to his segment, but once again it is a premise that goes nowhere. A room full of drunks ( Quentin Tarantino, Paul Calderon and Bruce Willis who apparently had his name taken off the credits ) have decided to reenact one of the episodes from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. A bet where if Paul Calderon is able to light his lighter sixteen times in a row he will get Tarantino's car, but if he fails then he will have a finger chopped off. And it is Ted who is reluctantly hired to be the one to chop Calderon's finger should he lose the bet. . It is well made and for much of it shot with a single steadicam giving the viewer the feeling of actually being in the room, sort of. But unlike Rodriguez segment that had a lot going on, this segment is one long setup to a single sight gag and nothing much more.

THE SCENE:
Thankfully you only have to wait six minutes into the movie for the fetish scene. Madonna wears a tight black latex gown that is by far one of the best costumes she ever wore on film. She is first seen in the hotel's lobby wearing the outfit but covered with a black waistcoat so that only the bottom half is revealed. Once in her room she turns toward the camera for the first time where we can see more of the dress through the open front of the waistcoat, first when she slowly spins around to look at the interior of the room, then again when she offers the bellhop his tip by making him remove it from between her cleavage. Madonna is seen again nine minutes into the film where she and the the other witches begin their ritual. No longer wearing her waistcoat we see the entire gown, from all angles as she begins dancing around the room with the other women. Madonna is seen briefly again at the 18-minute mark as she and the other witches are listening through the wall. She is seen a final time at 21 minutes as she and the other witches conclude the ceremony. I should also mention that Madonna's assistant in the movie, played by Alicia Witt, removes her top at one point revealing that her nipples are covered with black masking tape in an X pattern. A minimal fetish outfit but nearly as memorable as what Madonna is wearing.