Retire in New Hampshire

The Hotel New Hampshire

Description

From Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning* director Tony Richardson (Tom Jones) comes this "bright, amusing and provocative" (The Hollywood Reporter) film based on John Irving's best-selling novel. Featuring "a gifted cast" (LA Herald-Examiner), including OscarÂ(r)** winner Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs), Rob Lowe ("The West Wing") and Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys), The Hotel New Hampshire is "intriguing" (Boxoffice), "impressive" (LA Herald-Examiner) and "fascinating" (Variety)! A motley clan of eight lovable misfits, the Berry family sets out on an adventure to fulfill their father's lifelong aspiration of owning a hotel. Their quest takes them around the world, and they greet every new location with their own brand of outrageous humor, practical jokes and just plain weird eccentricism. But when this tribe of oddballs encounters a healthy dose of heartbreak, they soon must learn that not all in life is fun and games and that sometimes the only thing you have left is the one thing that matters most family. *1963: Best Picture, Director **1991: Actress, The Silenceof the Lambs; 1988: Actress, The Accused

Tony Richardson's adaptation of The Hotel New Hampshire proves that the unique qualities of John Irving's fiction are accessible in print and elusive on screen. (Not surprisingly, Irving's books were not truly successful as films until Irving himself adapted The Cider House Rules, although some viewers will prefer The World According to Garp.) Here, Richardson distills the essence of Irving but misses the author's dominant themes; the result is a film that follows Irving closely and understands its characters without ever giving them complete and coherent personalities. Without that essential ingredient, this film--about the exploits of a highly eccentric and dysfunctional family--grows thin and repetitious. We're left to enjoy the quirks of a fine ensemble cast, and the resilience of a family that has learned to survive by "passing open windows" (in other words, avoiding suicide no matter how tempting).

Beau Bridges is the Berry family patriarch and resident free spirit of the Hotel New Hampshire, where his children thrive on liberal parenting, a parade of unusual patrons, and their own lust for life, love, and--in the case of incestuous siblings John (Rob Lowe) and Frannie (Jodie Foster)--each other. Their coming-of-age tales are often a joy to behold, and Richardson draws some excellent performances from his young, stellar cast. What's missing here is a sense of deeper meaning and resonance; the film seems oddly random, while Irving's book clearly conveys an affectionate fascination with the tenacity of the human spirit. --Jeff Shannon

Reviews

Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2010-04-02
Summary: "Unrelenting, spastic sequence of absurd, tasteless,unsavory moments"

THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE (1984) in theory should have been a
fascinating, exciting movie with a lot of crowd-drawing power, from
its all-star cast, made up of Jodie Foster, Nastassja Kinski, Rob
Lowe and more, all in their prime ... aged 20 to 30 years, at the
time.

Unfortunately, this picture was written in 1 of 3 possible ways:
someone who's adapted the painting technique of throwing buckets of
paint at a canvas, calling himself a painter, and the result, a
painting to the movies; or someone with the mental age of 10; or
someone who has not only totally lost their mind, and has lost touch
with reality, in the present, and in their past.

Of course, it's a treat to see Foster, Kinski, Lowe in action, as
they are truly talented, in bringing forth subtle human
undercurrents, and visual expressions to the camera and audience.

But, this work apparently attempts to carry to the silver screen, a
novel in the style of Kurt Vonnegut, for example, or Douglas Adams,
who wrote Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, among others. I haven't
read, (and now, would probably decline to ever read) the original
manuscript or novel, but, most would probably give the benefit of
the doubt to the underlying book author.

In terms of movie, though, there's indubitably no redeeming value to
it, as it's a unrelenting, spastic sequence of absurd, tasteless,
unnecessary, unsavory moments, involving taboo after taboo,
intermixed with a sugar coating, to perhaps confusem, fool and
mesmerize the censors or movie rating authorities.

The sugar coating of the taboos, might perhaps make palatable the
underlying sequences to those with a low IQ, or perhaps to children,
but for all others, including teenagers, or seniors or those with a
wicked sense of humor, there's really no coherent story progressing
over the 90 mins.

As such, and the best remedy is really the fast forward button on
the DVD player, or, if you prefer (as was the case, in the 80's when
this work was released), getting up from your chair, and walking out
of the theatre.

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Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2008-08-11
Summary: "for people who find running with scissors entertaining"

Annoying film about buggered up East Coasters unleashing their ids. Jarring disfunction-junction setting that wants to be sick and cute all at once.

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Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2008-06-26
Summary: "Throw It Out the Open Windows"

This is truly a terrible film, and not in a great campy-terrible, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" terrible, but just poorly written, sloppily directed and edited, and un- or under-motivated.

One of the main problems was a genuine inconsistency in tone, where the director apparently couldn't decide if he was making a Keystone Kops farce or a bittersweet comedy. I knew I was in for a bad trip when, for no apparent reason, he sped up the film when Rob Lowe was making a football play, making the action fast-motion for no apparent reason -- a tactic he did a number of other times in the film, again for no apparent reason.

The story lurches from event to event without any character really developing his or her personality, so ultimately, you don't really care about what happens to them. Worse, anything that does happen to them is breezed by fairly superficially, as in the example of the deaths of two important characters in the film. What seems whimsical in Irving seems absurd and incredible here. Oh, and there is no chemistry whatsoever between Foster and Lowe.

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Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2007-11-28
Summary: "A chopped-up mix of eccentricity in HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE"

That the exploits of the very odd (to say the least) Berry family contains some wonderful performances from the young Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe in Tony Richardson's adaptation of John Irving's THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE goes without saying; but the chopped-up manner in which Richardson has handled Irving's narrative also goes without saying that it is a terrible hack job that flits quickly from scene to scene hardly allowing any of Irving's characters to develop, much less breathe.What we have here, in short, is a ghastly mess of a film about "passing windows" successfully without jumping out of them! There are so many themes that Richardson has drawn from Irving's novel,but not one of them is followed through successfully, and the result is a jolting ride leaving the viewer scratching their heads and saying "What was he thinking?".The only two characters that seem to survive in this film are Franny and Johnno thanks to the acting skills of Foster and Lowe respectively, as two sexual obsessed brother and sister who pine for each other.The relationship between those two is monitored more closely than the rest of this rag-tag bunch of eccentrics who are given erratic amounts of screen time which does not allow their characters to become anymore than just someone "Passing a window" of which they should have all jumped out...including Richardson.This film suffers from misguided direction and an inept screenplay adaptation.Only the performances of Foster and Lowe are at all noteworthy in this throwaway debacle! No small wonder that it took Irving,himself, to finally adapt his own work in THE CIDER HOUSE RULES before getting a proper treatment of his always odd
characters!

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2007-10-06
Summary: "stange yet..."

I really dug this film. The cast I thought was quite good. Although I agree that Susie the bear shoulda been played by Amanda Plummer instead of Natasha Kinksi.

A rather underated film...showing a bit of the lesbian in Jodie Foster onscreen..

There are some uncomfortable bits especially in the incest bwtween Foster & Lowes Brother & Sister.. But, all in all a marvel of a little film worth seeking out.