Four Directors Without Much Direction

“Four Rooms” adds up to four too many for the self-consciously hip enclave of Quentin Tarantino, Allison Anders, Robert Rodriguez and Alexandre Rockwell.

All these up-and-coming filmmakers are usually smack on the money with their quirky impressions of American life, but their collaborative “Four Rooms” is a real bringdown - an antsy anthology of tales leading from nowhere to nowhere.

They are helpfully strung together with a single performance that, thanks to a cunning re-edit between the September previews and this week’s opening, provides a big saving grace.

Tim Roth is the only actor who graces all four “rooms,” or stories, and his comic timing is satisfyingly evident in a nervous-wreck portrayal of a hotel bellhop who keeps landing in hot water.

Roth has brought a wealth of comic irony to his dead-earnest roles - see 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” and this year’s “Rob Roy” - but an earlier cut of “Four Rooms” did not indulge fully his gift at reacting to troublesome situations. And Roth is more interesting than any of the predicaments in which he finds himself here.

It is New Year’s Eve as Roth sets about his rounds. In room No. 1, he meets a coven of witches (including Valeria Golino, Madonna and Ione Skye) who require his services in a ritual designed to resurrect a notorious sorceress.

Allison Anders wrote and directed this scrofulous shaggy-dog yarn, which plays more like a joke told in some high-school locker room than a piece of serious cinema.

In the Alexandre Rockwell episode, Roth gets held at gunpoint by a sadistically jealous husband (David Proval). You can go on to the next room now.

Energetic, at least, is Texan Robert Rodriguez’s episode, in which a mobster and his wife (Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita) ill-advisedly leave their destructive children without a sitter.

The tale is merely a showcase for Rodriguez’s mastery of comic timing and camera movement; anyone who has enjoyed his current “Desperado” should find this small effort entertaining in a pictorial sense.

Tarantino’s closing yarn is a knockoff of “Man from the South,” perhaps the most famous tale from television’s original “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” series, in which the loser of a bet must forfeit a finger. Tarantino stars in this one, along with Bruce Willis and Marisa Tomei.

Unmemorabe dialogue - a far cry from the fidgety, menacing banter that fuels Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” - is the chief problem throughout.

Each director shows considerable visual style but proves lacking in the writing department. Tim Roth may not carry the film, but he drags it into a tolerable state.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Four Rooms” Location: Newport and Magic Lantern cinemas Credits: Directed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell; starring Tim Roth, Bruce Willis, Marisa Tomei, Antonio Banderas, Valeria Golino, Madonna and Jennifer Beals Rating: R