Four Rooms Details

Proof that wonderkid Quentin Tarantino is fallible. He's the driving force behind this horribly botched portmanteau movie and he also directs and stars in The Man from Hollywood segment. Set in the same hotel the four stories are loosely linked by inept bellboy Tim Roth (apparently in Jerry Lewis mode). Allison Anders's story of a witches coven is slight and silly; Alexandre Rockwell fares little better in a farcical yarn of a lover's tiff; while Tarantino's effort barely passes muster as an anecdote. The best of the bunch is Robert Rodriguez's The Misbehavers, a cartoon-like tale of Roth playing babysitter to a gangster's psychopathic children. The cast includes Bruce Willis, Madonna, Amanda De Cadenet and Salma Hayek, but while they obviously had a ball, you won't.

One of those occasions where the film-makers may have enjoyed themselves, but audiences won't. Four feeble anecdotes suffer from sloppy writing and unfocused acting; it should have remained a home movie.