Audience Member
What happens at this hotel? Anything Rob Lowe, Jodie Foster, Wilford Brimley, Beau Bridges based on the book by John Irving It focuses on a family in the 1950s 5 children and their parents called the Berrys They open a hotel near a pep school in New Hampshire The most distressing thing though is that the oldest son John confesses he's in love with Franny...his sister of all things These people go through all kinds of changes and experiences whether it's sex, partying, running a business etc. The filmmakers even so much as bring someone dressed as a bear adding to the kooky nature There's some goofy moments, disturbing ones, and some over the top editing Tonally this was all over the place and the translation to the screen is a bit rocky so it might fail to capture what made the novel so full of essence
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/09/24
Full Review
Luciano B
This movie isn't outright awful, but it's so tonally inconsistent and weirdly paced that I found it hard to really get invested in. One moment there's something really serious and dramatic, then the next it's almost cartoonish in how it's filmed and portrayed.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
12/05/22
Full Review
steve d
There isn't enough story here to engage.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This is some kind of bizarre coming of age-slapstick-romantic-drama-comedy-absurdist movie with a twist of incest.
If you put a newspaper into a blender then mixed that into papier mache and sculpted a life-like banana then fed that banana to a cow then waited until the cow pooped out the papier mache banana then used that dung for fertilizer to grow a crop of tomatoes... the bugs that came to eat those tomatoes would write a better movie than this.
10/10 purely because what the ffff did I just watch.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I had never watched the movie completely before now. This was definitely something else... Never even noticed Matthew Modine before re-watching now that I am older. This truly is an intriguing film, with a very good cast.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
Full Review
Audience Member
John Berry (Rob Lowe) remembers the time when his parents met and fell in love while working summer jobs at a New England hotel around World War II. They are brought together by Freud (Wallace Shawn), a European refugee who travels with a performing bear. In the 1950s, Win Berry (Beau Bridges) and his wife (Lisa Banes) have five children, John, Franny (Jodie Foster), Frank (Paul McCrane), Lilly (Jennifer Dundas), and Egg(Seth Green). The Berrys decide to open a hotel near the prep school that John, Franny, and Frank attend; they call it the Hotel New Hampshire. John loses his virginity to the hotel waitress. Frank comes out to Franny and John; Franny is raped by big man on campus Chipper Dove (Matthew Modine) and his buddies, and is rescued by Junior Jones and other black members of the school football team; John confesses that he's in love with Franny; the family dog, Sorrow, dies and Frank has him stuffed. Sorrow's reappearance at Christmas causes Berry grandfather Iowa Bob (Wilford Brimley) to suffer a fatal heart attack. A letter arrives from Austria. It's Freud, inviting the Berrys to move to Vienna and run Freud's gasthaus. The family flies to Europe; tragically, the plane carrying Mrs. Berry and Egg explodes, killing them. In Vienna, the family moves into the gasthaus and renames it Hotel New Hampshire. An upper floor houses prostitutes and the basement is occupied by radicals of various political stripes. Assisting Freud, who has gone blind, is Susie the Bear (Nastassja Kinski), a young lesbian who lives her life almost completely in a bear costume. One of the radicals, Ernst, resembles Chipper Dove and Franny becomes infatuated with him. Susie and John, who are both in love with Franny, try to keep her away from him. Susie is initially successful in seducing Franny but soon she ends up with Ernst. Lilly, who is a dwarf, begins writing a novel called Trying to Grow. One of the radicals, Miss Miscarriage (Amanda Plummer), grows very fond of the family, and especially of Lilly. She invites John to her flat and sleeps with him, then warns him to get the family out of Vienna. For her trouble, another of the radicals murders her. Back at the hotel, John and the rest of the family are caught up in the radicals' plan to blow up the Vienna State Opera with a car bomb. The blind Freud, to spare the family, volunteers to drive with one of the radicals. As he leaves, the Berrys attack the remaining radicals and Freud detonates the bomb right outside the hotel. Ernst is killed and Win is blinded in the explosion. The Berry´s decides to return home and try to handle everything that has happend, but there´s more to come...
I have never red John Irving´s "Hotel New Hampshire", but by judging it via the movie adapation it´s one wild story with way too many off-the wall characters for my taste. The problem with the film is the very unbalanced structure between comedy, bizarre and surreal black comedy and drama. I truly disliked the goofball comedy style Tony Richardson has added in the mix. When the story takes a darker turn we get fast-action cinematography... The acting is truly wishy washy, despite the fact that we have several known names in the main parts. The editing is a mess. The storyline is along the line of a twisted "Forrest Gump" and the mix of comedy and depressing drama is not working at all. Random characters and situations, no continuity or narrative flow and confusion is the main pillar of the film. We are also served incest, rape, murder, accidental death, suicide, radical German nihilists, pornography, and a lesbian in a bear suit. "Hotel New Hampshire" is pretentious, weird, unfunny and a chaotic mess.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Read all reviews
Post a rating
>
