The World According to Garp

What happens when you have comedy that isn't funny, drama that isn't dramatic, politics that are absurd, and a plot consisting of scenes wholly unconnected to each other instead of a plot? You get an utter waste of two hours of your life. Nothing likable, nothing interesting, but plenty to annoy in this movie. Everyone involved should be ashamed to be stealing from anyone foolish enough to watch this.

source: The World According to Garp

Trailer—The World According to Garp

In a fine performance, Robin Williams plays T.S. Garp, whose unusual experiences in life have given him a funny world view. Born out of wedlock to proto-feminist Jenny Fields (Glenn Close, in a remarkable film debut), Garp comes to see the world as...well, I can't really describe it. This is the sort of movie that you just have to see to understand. It sort of straddles nihilistic and optimistic; we see that no matter what we do in life, there are some things that we can just never deal with. If we've reached the apex of moral authority and can only descend from here, then so be it. Anyway, "The World According to Garp" is a great movie. From the author of "The Cider House Rules" (John Irving) and the director of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (George Roy Hill), this is a movie unlike many others. See it.

This book is one of my favorites, so I had to see eventually how the movie stacked up. Not bad, but not perfect either. The movie takes so long to get going that the end seems rushed. If I hadn't read the book, I would have had a hard time really understanding the feud with the Ellen Jamesians or Pooh's hatred of Garp. Still, this is one of Robin Williams's less annoying performances and a talented cast that at the time not many people had probably heard of. In the end, the movie is complex, at times funny and others sad, and maintains the spirit of the novel. The book is better, IMO, but this is close enough. "The Cider House Rules" is an even better adaptation--if you like this, you'll love that.