Just the thing for the person who couldn't get through the book and wondered how it came out. They're all laid out here, all those unforgettable and unbelievable and unstomachable moments from the novel. They possibly seem a little flatter on the screen, partly due to the absence of John Irving's puckish prose, and partly due to the omnipresence of Miroslav Ondricek's overcast color. Still, the contrived plot, the symbolism, the flying motif, and the myriad recurrences and reversals help to preserve the arid, airless, literary flavor of the original. The movie is already comatose before the entrance of Robin Williams, in the role of the adult Garp, sole progeny of the starchiest movie matriarch since Flora Robson or Anne Revere (Glenn Close, in her screen debut), and hero-figure for raging egomaniacs. Williams's own brand of puckishness is no substitute for Irving's. He often seems a bit fey, a bit "touched," a bit puerile, and a bit simpletonian; and despite those moments when he reminds you of Rod Taylor playing Sean O'Casey, he never seems to possess the mental wherewithal to be a Major American Fiction Writer. (The Fellini-esque fantasy scene, to illustrate his first published short story, is no help there.) With Mary Beth Hurt and John Lithgow; scripted by Steve Tesich; directed by George Roy Hill. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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