The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

Win Berry (Beau Bridges) and his wife have five kids, John (Rob Lowe), Franny (Jodie Foster), Frank, Lilly, and Egg (Seth Green). Win and his wife worked at a summer New England hotel where they met Freud (Wallace Shawn) and his bear before the war. Freud left for war leaving the bear with Win and telling the couple to get married. After the war, the hotel is abandoned and the bear gets killed by mistake. The family is a rambunctious bunch with farting dog Sorrow. The Berry kids get picked on by Chip Dove (Matthew Modine) especially since Frank is gay. Lilly has stopped growing. Win buys an abandoned school and turns it into a hotel. Frank and Franny pay waitress Ronda Ray to take away John's virginity. On Halloween, John and Franny are running to get an ambulance for a cop who had a heart-attack. Chip Dove and his friends catch them, and they gang-rape Franny. Junior Jones and the other black students come to the rescue. Frank had Sorrow stuffed. Their grandpa Iowa Bob (Wilford Brimley) dies. Freud invites the family to help run his Vienna hotel. Win had taken one of Freud's story making "Keep passing the open window" as the family motto. Of course, the tragedies keep coming. Mother and Egg are killed on the plane over. The Berrys find Freud blinded and Susie the Bear (Nastassja Kinski) working at the rundown hotel populated by hookers and revolutionaries like Miss Miscarriage and Ernst who looks exactly like Chip Dove. The family stays and renames the place Hotel New Hampshire.This is adapted from the John Irving novel who also wrote "The World According to Garp". The two movies have very similar sensibilities. This one has more main characters. It does have a feel of being overstuffed. Every character has some strange aspects. However, this movie is filled with memorable scenes and turns. These unforgettable characters are played by some very interesting actors.

John Irving is one of my favorite authors. I've read all of his books, including his classic novel, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE. The book is an epic, funny, and shocking read, especially for it's time, and yet it lives on as a memorable, unique, and powerful piece of literature. It is probably one of my favorite books by him. If you're a book person, I highly recommend it. This film is an attempt to put the book in film form. Did they succeed? Well, yes and no. Yes in that they managed to squeeze a lot of events and content contained in the book into a very tight hour and fifty minutes. However the filmmaker failed to tell a story. The director, Tony Richardson managed to succeed at getting an idea established, craft characters, events, situations, and characteristics in a way that that makes sense, and has created epic set pieces for these characters to do this things in. However, he has not set up any sort of perspective, conflict, or reason for a person to view this. I do, however, recommend it. The major flaw in this film is that there is too much stuff happening and not enough reason for the viewer to pay attention or care. In a sense, however, he has succeeded at putting images behind the shocking and horrific events of the book. I'm not sure, however, if I should be complimenting him for this. This film certainly gets the grotesque nature of the book down perfectly. The aspects of incest, rape, sexual fetishes, domination, murder, and brutality are captured rather bluntly and without any reservations. Those aspects were done perfectly. However, do I really want to see a film of THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE that highlights THOSE parts of the book rather than the events as a whole? I guess, yes, in a sense, because the events of THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE did get to me and did put images in my head that bothered me, and the fact that this film has these same images does much to help me identify with what's going on. However, the film also tries to comedy, and as a result it all seems more shocking. But after a while, it all becomes shock for shocks sake. The film adaptation of THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP didn't try to capture all of these horrible and shocking things that occurred within the course of the book but rather set those aside in order to concentrate on telling a story and crafting characters. It didn't work as well as it could of, but it worked in that a hell of a lot more that what the filmmakers try to go for in this. Having said that, I do love this film. As flawed as it is and as misguided as it is as a whole, I loved seeing the characters, events, and tone being in film form. The acting jobs by all the players, the look, the tone, and the general premise all translate very well. If there were a story, I would have an easier time recommending it, but I think I will have to say that this is worth seeing by fans of John Irving's book only.

This is deceptively packaged as a caring and sharing, romantic tale of endeavour, and goodness only knows what those snuggling down on a rainy Sunday afternoon would make of it. This is not a very American style film even if we do get American football and cheerleaders at the start. This is far more noticeable for it's scenes of attempted rape, male and female gang rape, bestiality, voyeurism, lesbianism, whatever the word for older woman/younger guy, a bear riding a bicycle and a central relationship running throughout that is an incestuous one between brother and sister AND that is consummated at great length. I am not a fan of either Beau Bridges or Jodie Foster but they perform well enough, it is just regrettable that Natasha Kinski spends most of the film in a bear costume. The film loses some direction in Vienna but it is an enjoyable enough very unusual movie.

First of, this is not a comedy. Where was the fun? because I somehow missed it. I believe you'll find the movie to be insensitive and sometimes even gross. Also, the acting is quite disappointing. The argument is completely ridiculous, and it gets worse as the movie develops.I can think of many ways to describe this movie; lame, boring, stupid, weak, grotesque, absurd, poor...Only if you're curious to see the young Jodie Foster or Rob Lowe I would recommend this fiasco. But even in that case, it would be better for you to just watch "Taxi Driver" or "Youngblood" for instance.This is not worth watching. It's a terrible waste of time and I do not recommend it.