Yesterday's Movies

Before watching the movie:

This month is for anthology movies, so here’s one that’s been kicking around the back catalogs of my streaming service recommendations for a while. Each room is a separate short film by a different filmmaker, and the main throughline between them is the bellhop having to deal with all the guests.

After watching the movie:

Ted, the new bellhop of the Hotel Mon Signor, gets left to run the hotel alone on his first night, which is also New Year’s Eve. A coven of witches are in the honeymoon suite, and one novice witch failed to bring the ingredient for their spell, which happens to be something Ted can help supply. Hard partiers call Ted for some ice, but give him the wrong room number, where he finds a man with his wife tied up holding him at gunpoint in the belief that Ted slept with his wife. Another couple decide at the last minute not to take their kids with them to the party and instead tell the kids to call Ted for anything, the only rule they intend to follow to the letter. And in the penthouse suite, a gang of Hollywood friends need Ted’s impartial help with a very particular bet.

A concept like this will live and die on its segments, and the first segment with the witches makes it difficult to get to the rest. It’s probably important for Ted to have a weird but positive first experience, but the whole affair is the raunchiest part and the only intrusion of the supernatural into the movie as a whole, so it’s just weird and uncomfortable watching a gang of witches order their youngest member to seduce the bellhop.

I feel like the mistaken identity and unclear reality of the second segment could be spun into a full movie of its own. I’m not sure if the pacing works the way it is, but it’s fun and a relaxing change after the last several minutes of cringing. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it other than it’s good enough.

Robert Rodriguez’s segment is rightly considered the best of the bunch, perfectly pitched and making good use of the child actors. You can see how he went on to Spy Kids from here. I just have the small aside that the assumption that the something in the room that smells really bad leads to an uncomfortable focus on the kids smelling each other’s feet and their own, to a degree that made me wonder if this was Tarantino’s segment, as he’s the one with the famous foot fetish.

Tarantino’s segment was obvious when it came because he likes to play pretty prominent roles in his own movies. I don’t know why he only acts in his own movies. His passion seems to be in writing and directing, but he also likes to give himself an unmistakable part, and here he’s the central character of his own segment, leaving hardly any room for Bruce Willis, who is also there the entire time. Quite a lot of this segment is done in a single, wandering take, that I think is meant to build the tension as you wonder what they want with Ted anyway, but mostly just made me want to shout at the screen to get on with it. It’s something like fifteen minutes of buildup for two seconds of payoff.

Part of why I avoided this for so long was because I thought it was a raunchy sex comedy, but that’s only true of the first 20 minutes or so. The rest of the movie was variable in quality but ultimately more enjoyable than the first hurdle. The good part about an anthology approach is like unpredictable weather: if you don’t like it, it’ll be something different soon.