THE FILM:
Tim Roth stars as the Bellboy of an LA hotel that's falling apart in this series of stories, each filmed by a different young director. What seems like an interesting idea gets old very quickly; the film is almost saved though, by the fantastic performance of Tim Roth, as a bellhop who becomes increasingly annoyed by the strange tennants in various rooms.

The best scene is easily the one directed by "Desperado" director Robert Rodriquez. It involves a brother and sister spending the night alone in their hotel room and getting into quite a bit of trouble. They start small, trashing the room and getting Ted(Roth) slightly annoyed. By the end of the segment, a dead body has turned up and Ted is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The scene is sharp, fast and smart comedy and it's hilarious enough to be a film of it's own.

Quentin Tarantino's scene has a wild and funny tone, but it's a bit sloppy. I think Tarantino's million-words-a-minute dialogue is always hilarious and he makes the scene enjoyable about a bunch of Hollywood stars placing a very interesting bet that may involve the loss of a finger. The scene has that Tarantino quality, but it's just a little messy in the way it's set-up and done.

The other two scenes, one involving a group of witches and the other involving a husband holding a wife hostage, are not very interesting and both are paced too slowly to be entertaining.

It's Roth that's really entertaining throughout. It's a wild, free-fall performance full of funny mugging, reactions and Jim Carrey-esque physical comedy. Overall, the movie is generally entertaining, but not terribly memorable.

THE DVD:
VIDEO QUALITY: An enjoyable transfer presented in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The colors are vibrant and accurately presented. Images are clear and crisp, but lacking in sharpness. There are slight artifacts throughout, but nothing that I found highly distracting. Contrast and color saturation are nicely presented throughout and there are no instances of "bleeding" in the colors. Shadow detail is good, but not great. The brighter scenes actually look suprisingly nice. It's only during some of the dimly lit scenes that the image begins to look the slightest bit murky and begins to slightly lose detail.

Disney has been putting out fairly good transfers, even though they're not anamorphic. Lately, they have been losing their touch a little bit(check out their release of the Miramax film Beautiful Girls), for example. Even so, I was fairly pleased with the quality of this disc. If Disney ever decides to go with anamorphic transfers for their films, they would be putting out some really incredible product. As it is, they're just doing passable work, not taking advantage of the format like they could be.

SOUND: "Four Rooms" is pretty much completely dialogue-driven. The occasional score sounds pretty good, but it's used sparsely throughout the movie. The dialogue sounds crisp, clear and natural throughout. There is occasionally active sound, but nothing at all that's terribly active or that agressive.

MENUS:Basic, but actually rather enjoyably set-up. The menus look like a "hotel", with different doorways and an "elevator" background for the scene seelction. No animation, but at least it's not 100% basic and without any thought whatsoever.

EXTRAS:NONE.

GRADES:
The Film: 75/C = (375/500 possible points)
Video: 86/B = (344/400 possible points)
Audio: 83/B = (332/400 possible points)
Extras: 0/F = (0/300 possible points)
Menus: 70/C- = (120/200 possible points)
Value: 65/D = (195/300 possible points)
Presentation:59.75/F = (59.75/100 possible points)

TOTAL POINTS:1425.75/2200
Overall Percentage:64.8%/D

Final Thoughts: It's certainly a film that's occasionally funny and the transfer isn't half bad. But if Disney is going to not even include the trailer on their older titles and still charge $29.99, I'm going to give each and every disc a zero in the extras category every time and that certainly never helps the overall grade. The transfer here is certainly passable, but not including even a trailer is disgusting for $29.99. Even Paramount and Fox include the trailer on every disc. The most disgusting thing on this disc is even though we don't get a trailer, we do get a list of "recommended titles", so apparently Disney thought that space to advertise other movies was more important than space for the trailer to be included. If you liked this movie, the transfer is certainly enjoyable enough to recommend, but you certainly don't get anything extra for your money and in my opinion, you don't even get much for what you pay for here.