Review of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984) by Diane C — 14 Jun 2008

For fans of the book only. 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.