Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

SnoopyStyle Win Berry (Beau Bridges) and his wife have five kids, John (Rob Lowe), Franny (Jodie Foster), Frank, Lilly, and Egg (Seth Green). Win and his wife worked at a summer New England hotel where they met Freud (Wallace Shawn) and his bear before the war. Freud left for war leaving the bear with Win and telling the couple to get married. After the war, the hotel is abandoned and the bear gets killed by mistake. The family is a rambunctious bunch with farting dog Sorrow. The Berry kids get picked on by Chip Dove (Matthew Modine) especially since Frank is gay. Lilly has stopped growing. Win buys an abandoned school and turns it into a hotel. Frank and Franny pay waitress Ronda Ray to take away John's virginity. On Halloween, John and Franny are running to get an ambulance for a cop who had a heart-attack. Chip Dove and his friends catch them, and they gang-rape Franny. Junior Jones and the other black students come to the rescue. Frank had Sorrow stuffed. Their grandpa Iowa Bob (Wilford Brimley) dies. Freud invites the family to help run his Vienna hotel. Win had taken one of Freud's story making "Keep passing the open window" as the family motto. Of course, the tragedies keep coming. Mother and Egg are killed on the plane over. The Berrys find Freud blinded and Susie the Bear (Nastassja Kinski) working at the rundown hotel populated by hookers and revolutionaries like Miss Miscarriage and Ernst who looks exactly like Chip Dove. The family stays and renames the place Hotel New Hampshire.This is adapted from the John Irving novel who also wrote "The World According to Garp". The two movies have very similar sensibilities. This one has more main characters. It does have a feel of being overstuffed. Every character has some strange aspects. However, this movie is filled with memorable scenes and turns. These unforgettable characters are played by some very interesting actors.

ozjeppe Given the people involved here, this is one of the most fascinating screen train wrecks I've ever seen. It's plain obvious that even if you, like myself, haven't read John Irving's novel which this is based on, a TV series must be the only way to adapt this, if anything to fit in its vast content. I have no other explanation for this anarchistically surreal, whirlwind mess of a 110 min' film: The saga of a large family of eccentrics trying to make it in the hotel business both on the American east coast and Vienna - oh, apart from all their sexual shenanigans, encounters of counterpart weirdos and inexplicable hang-ups about circus bears, of course...From the word go, I'm told not to take anything seriously (sort of like in a Fellini-world), so I don't... which has the effect that when dramatic, supposedly emotionally engaging incidents occur (gang rape, terrorism...) - I still don't! The characters feel randomly thrown into a huge tumble-dryer, spun around, taken out, some discarded, put back, spun around, etc until nobody cares, because although SO much indeed is happening, nothing is invested in them with this sloppy irregularity - not even a laugh.Too boot, we get poor sound effects (a farting dog? Hilarious... maybe for a 5-year-old!) & editing, fast-motion slapstick á la the old Benny Hill Show and over-acting to match, although Jodie Foster is always watchable. In most aspects, a truly terrible movie. Anyone think you're up for this challenge? You WOULD seriously be better off watching an old Benny Hill episode!2 out of 10 from Ozjeppe.

TedMichaelMor The film is John Irving weird and thus delightful in its way. The sense of light in the film is what delights me, almost delights me most about the movie. I recall lines from an Alun Lewis poem "Remember in the play of happiness . . . the joy is in the sharing of the feast. . . . ." I think that is what makes this film—a sense of shared joy, of exultation. The interplay of symbols and references passes easily enough and one almost smiles—almost.What most deeply touched me was the character Lilly. I know her. The image of her not passing the windows but going to them while the wind blows through the large empty room echoes many films after the gentle scene of Lilly returning to her typewriter to write the simple message, "Sorry, just not big enough. " I have been there and know why she refuses to pass the window.For me, that is all the film really needs to be outstanding. That is the film for me.

silvergirl606 I have never read any John Irving, but based on this movie and "Simon Birch", the man is either a jaw-droppingly terrible writer, or he has the worst luck in movie adaptations of any author in history.This movie lost me in the first five minutes. The plot is impossible to follow without confusion. There are in fact 147 different plots, each more absurd than the last. The most absurd being the campy terrorists whose plot is never explained. Characters die and their family members never seem sad. It's impossible to tell how much time has passed. Characters wander in and out without explanation. The dialog and characters are laughable and totally unbelievable. Even good actors like Jodie Foster are awkward and are always a beat off.The slapstick attempts at humor made me cringe (to say nothing of the incest.) The gang rape and multiple deaths of family members made me laugh, because I didn't believe in the characters or the situations.When Jodie Foster's character is raped I was disturbed for a moment. But when her brother and a gang of black students rush to the rescue, and Foster's character makes some crack about "same old Halloween" I laughed. I laughed harder when they bring her home and she just wants to recover from the experience by cuddling with dog...WHO THE FATHER HAS JUST HAS PUT TO SLEEP. The girl is gang raped and her father put the dog to sleep without telling her. This is better than "Degrassi" or other after school specials, and cannot be taken at all seriously.Perhaps some things were meant to be surreal or blackly humorous, but none of the humor or the surreal impossibility of the many plots seemed intentional.Perhaps Irving is a good writer, but I wonder after the campy mess of an acid trip of this film and the soppy diabetic mess of "Simon Birch." If you enjoyed "Plan 9 From Outer Space", you should pick this film up. Oh hell, it's a masterpiece that will have you laughing, laughing, cringing, and hitting your pillows and screaming "WHAT THE FCK?!!!"