The World According to Garp

Name: The World According to Garp
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: July 23, 1982
Duration: 136 min
Rating: 63
Cast: George Ede, Glenn Close, Hume Cronyn, James McCall, Jessica Tandy

1982

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Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews

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Generally favorable reviews based on 7 Ratings

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6.7

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6.7	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 7 Ratings

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The World According To Garp

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Movie Details & Credits

Warner Bros. | Release Date: July 23, 1982 | R

Starring: George Ede, Glenn Close, Hume Cronyn, James McCall, Jessica Tandy, John Lithgow, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter Michael Goetz, Robin Williams, Swoosie Kurtz

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.

Director: George Roy Hill

Genre(s): Drama, Comedy

Rating: R

Runtime: 136 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Staff (Not Credited)

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. Read full review

Janet Maslin

If it was finally the book's whimsical side that endeared it to so many readers, the movie is missing none of that charm. If anything, it's got a little more...A gentle, intelligent film and an interesting one. Read full review

Roger Ebert

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. Read full review

Rita Kempley

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]

Empire William Thomas

The script might have benefited from being directed by someone more daring, instead George Roy Hill settles for more mainstream territory. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Williams is cuddly enough as the man whose talents for nurturing a family are constantly undermined by a malign fate, and there is a performance of some dignity from Lithgow as a six-and-a-half-foot ex-pro footballer transsexual. But it's the kind of movie which is brave - or stupid - enough to ask the meaning of life without having enough arse in its breeches to warrant a reply. Read full review

Richard Schickel

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. Read full review

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User Reviews

MarcDoyle

May 26, 2018

John Lithgow is so amazing in this. You'd never see a movie like this hit theaters these days. Also love Glen Close and her life path.

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DawdlingPoet

Nov 27, 2021

This is a strange film, I think its fair to say - sort of madcap but not in the usual way for Robin William films. The main character is certainly quirky and somewhat interesting but the plot narrative didn't really work for me, as I felt that not much in the way of context was given toThis is a strange film, I think its fair to say - sort of madcap but not in the usual way for Robin William films. The main character is certainly quirky and somewhat interesting but the plot narrative didn't really work for me, as I felt that not much in the way of context was given to things. It felt a bit too long drawn out, although, to be fair, I thought Roberta Muldoon, played by John Lithgow, was another interesting character - I enjoyed the scenes featuring 'her' (a transsexual) and him. I felt that Garps mother - her feminist manifesto aspect, I didn't feel it really fit into the film somehow. Its a quirky and a fairly watchable film, with the titular characters conception being explained in a slightly disturbing way at the start of the film. Its not quite an awful film, it has potential but it just doesn't quite...work for me and usually I like character dramas and I like quite a lot of Robin Williams' films, so it was a little bit of a disappointment. I wouldn't especially recommend it, no.… Expand

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