Four Rooms

In the new anthological comedy "Four Rooms" (opening at two Salt Lake theaters on Christmas Day), the central character is a nerdy bellboy named Ted, whose first night on the job is one long New Year's Eve.

During the film he innocently meanders through four stories set in a seedy hotel, each yarn written and directed a different filmmaker, and each a bit darker than the one before.

The first story, titled "The Missing Ingredient," has Ted surrounded by a coven of witches who want him to provide them with something their magical brew is missing — and it's not on the room-service menu.

Next comes "The Wrong Man," in which Ted is mistaken for the lover of a gun-wielding maniac's unfaithful wife, as he finds himself drawn into a psychosexual drama.

In the third, "The Misbehavers," Ted is assigned by a deadly criminal to watch over his two young children, which leads to the room being trashed, a body being discovered in a mattress and the bellboy's sanity nearly going over the edge. (The big gags include the two very young children smoking, drinking and swearing.)

And finally, in "The Man From Hollywood," Ted finds himself lured into a "game" with several Hollywood movers and shakers who want to re-create an old Alfred Hitchcock television program, one in which someone's finger is destined to be chopped off if a lighter doesn't ignite 10 times in a row.

Oddly enough, Ted is played with manic, Jerry Lewis-influenced mugging and twitching by the serious English actor Tim Roth, who is best known as the villain in "Rob Roy," and whose other films are generally desperate melo-dramas that cast him as low-life punks ("Bodies, Rest & Motion," "Little Odessa," "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction").

And as if the connection needs to be driven home, a character tells Ted late in the film that Jerry Lewis once starred in a comedy set in a hotel called "The Bellboy." Well, duh.

As you might guess, this very dark, broadly played slapstick comedy is wild, zany, crazy, silly and very weird.

Unfortunately, it is not funny.

It is, however, star-studded. The first story features Madonna, Val-eria Golino, Lili Taylor and Ione Skye among the witches (two of whom spend most of this episode topless). The second has Jennifer Beals as the cheating wife, bound and gagged until she is required to spit out 40 or 50 slang terms for the male organ. The third features Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita as the parents of the mischievous kids. And in the last tale, Beals shows up again, along with Quentin Tarantino and unbilled Bruce Willis.

Not that it matters. Jim Carrey could have had a room here and the film still wouldn't be funny. (Come to think of it, maybe Roth isn't doing Lewis — maybe he's doing Carrey!)