I seem to recall that when "Four Rooms" came out, it was critically and commercially derided. When I saw it a few months later, I actually thought that it was pretty well done. I knew that Quentin Tarantino was involved in the making, so I could safely assume that there was an element of sleaze in the movie.

Well, the movie is likely to blow anyone away, just in terms of how far they go. Portraying bellhop Ted (Tim Roth) and his loony experiences on New Year's Eve while waiting on several people in a hotel, they blow everything out of the water. The first two segments are pretty lowbrow: the first one portrays a witches' coven and the second one portrays a psychopath who thinks that Ted had sex with his wife.

But when we get to the third segment, that's where the movie really takes off. Ted has to watch the children of a slick Mexican guy named Man (Antonio Banderas). After a few incidents, Man comes back and finds the room in the most mind-blowing scene imaginable. And, the last segment. Ted, in a totally frenetic state, goes to a room where several Hollywood guys are having a discussion (with as many curse words as possible). What happens at the end of that segment...well, let me just tell you that no one sees that coming! All in all, people who think that the movie didn't go anywhere obviously missed the point. I don't know for certain whether this movie was just an excuse to be crazy, but it sure seemed like that. You're sure to have fun watching it. Also starring Madonna, Valeria Golino, Jennifer Beals, Salma Hayek, and even Quentin Tarantino in the final segment playing a Hollywood type.

Ted (Tim Roth) is the bellhop at the old Mon Signor Hotel in Hollywood. Elspeth (Madonna), Athena (Valeria Golino), Jezebel (Sammi Davis), Raven (Lili Taylor), and Eva (Ione Skye) are a coven of witches trying to release the goddess Diana. Elspeth brought along her daughter Kiva (Alicia Witt). Husband and wife Siegfried (David Proval) and Angela (Jennifer Beals) are role playing a fantasy game. A couple (Antonio Banderas, Tamlyn Tomita) leave to go to a New Year's Eve party and has Ted watch their kids. Ted calls his boss Betty (Kathy Griffin) and have a long talk with Margaret (Marisa Tomei). Betty tells him about important famous director Chester Rush (Quentin Tarantino) in the penthouse.

Tim Roth is going insane with his performance. His manic energy gives this a drive. However the disparate stories rambles on and on. It's a mess and not a compelling one. Tim Roth's strange act is weird but it gets tiresome. That's basically the whole movie. The witchy start is a simple sex romp. Beals and Proval are boring. The movie loses my interest. The kids are OK and they end with a fun scene. Then Tarantino loses me completely. There is maybe one passable story or one and a half at most. There are too many boring parts in this.

Flaky, flippant substitute-bellhop in a run-down Hollywood hotel encounters a coven of comely witches, a psychotic man and his wife involved in sexual, violent role-playing, a gangster and his wife who need a babysitter for their precocious kids, and a wire-strung Hollywood auteur who proposes a bloody game of winner-take-all. Hinging on the unfunny results of Tim Roth's performance as the uniformed bellboy, this poorly-made, inconsistent, off-putting collage of eccentrics falls completely flat. Roth, who is not a rubber-faced comedian (but who hopes to be here), attempts a bon vivant air of light-hearted smugness that just seems perverse. The rest of the talented cast is either humiliated (Ione Skye, as a half-naked witch) or used for decoration or as a punch-line. Antonio Banderas' sleek, oily gangster is amusing, and the little kids are quite good, but their segment ends on an odious, completely inappropriate note--and yet nobody behind or in front of the camera wants to show any responsibility. The feeling is one of 'anything for a laugh', yet the writing is wincingly unfunny, and the four different directors are simply not in sync (not with each other nor with the material), particularly Quentin Tarantino, who stars in and directed the final segment and appears to be winging it. NO STARS.