X
- 1982
- R
- Warner Bros.
- 2 h 16 m
- 1982
- R
- Warner Bros.
- 2 h 16 m
Summary Based on the John Irving novel, a struggling young writer (Robin Williams) finds his life and work dominated by his unfaithful wife and his radical feminist mother, whose best-selling manifesto turns her into a cultural icon.
Directed By: George Roy Hill
Written By: John Irving, Steve Tesich
- 1982
- R
- Warner Bros.
- 2 h 16 m
- 1982
- R
- Warner Bros.
- 2 h 16 m
The World According to Garp
63
6.6
Where to Watch
Summary Based on the John Irving novel, a struggling young writer (Robin Williams) finds his life and work dominated by his unfaithful wife and his radical feminist mother, whose best-selling manifesto turns her into a cultural icon.
Directed By: George Roy Hill
Written By: John Irving, Steve Tesich
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 14 Critic Reviews
63
50% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
50% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 14 Critic Reviews
63
50% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
50% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
George Roy Hill’s film adaptation of [John Irving’s novel] The World According to Garp has taste, intelligence, craft and numerous other virtues going for it.
Writer Tesich, previously responsible for Four Friends and Breaking
Away, serves Irving's material straight up - the adaptation is thorough
and four-square and seemingly unconscious of the bizarre nature of Garp's
odyssey through modern mores. The strategy works. [23 July 1982]
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 8 User Ratings
6.6
50% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
50% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 8 User Ratings
6.6
50% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
50% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
There are no user reviews yet. Be the first to add a review.
The movie version of Garp, however, left me entertained but unmoved, and perhaps the movie's basic failing is that it did not inspire me to walk out on it. Something has to be wrong with a film that can take material as intractable as Garp and make it palatable.
Williams, might have been more aggressive. Otherwise, director Roy Hill has done about as well as you can when translating word to image, not only through plot, but via the repetition of symbols: primitive, obvious ones -- the toad, a death's head costume, a child's clumsy drawings. After two hours and 20 minutes, all the parables and paradoxes join in a sluggish whole. And we wind up where we began, up in the air without a tail gunner. [23 July 1982, p.11]
The script might have benefited from being directed by someone more daring, instead George Roy Hill settles for more mainstream territory.
The World According to Garp is another of those films that fairly cries out for Robert Altman, who makes movies the way John Irving writes books. Altman doesn't seem to be making movies any more, so this is as close we're able to get to Garp, and it's not close enough. [23 July 1982, p.D10]
What is missing from the movie is any attempt to discover a cinematic language that compares with the language of the novel. Where the book jumped, the movie plods; where the novelist came upon his themes in the course of rich exploration, the movie marches up and confronts them with all the subtlety of a morning-talk-show host. It is hard to recall any recent movie, of whatever literary lineage, that is as dully literal and unadventurous as this one.
Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 2 Nominations
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
National Board of Review, USA
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
