The Hotel New Hampshire Reviews

Since I have always had a weak spot for Jodie Foster, I was quite eager to check this flick. To be honest, even though I’ve seen virtually everything she did in the 90’s and the 00’s, I have to admit, I’m pretty oblivious about what she did as a child or young adult. On the other hand, Foster herself admitted that her career was on the low curve at that time, a low curse which ended with ‘The Accused’ for which she won her first Academy award. Anyway, how was the damned thing? Basically, it is another adaptation of a rather weird book written by John Irving, the guy also responsible for ‘The World according to Garp’. To be honest, I’m not sure if the book is weird since I haven’t read it but this movie was definitely weird, in a rather creepy way. I mean, I didn’t care much for ‘Garp’ but even though it was already rather peculiar, I could see the point of the whole thing. Not this time though. I mean, even though the actors were trying really hard to sell this, I thought this flick was seriously unpleasant to watch. Indeed, it is basically a quirky comedy which very awkwardly handles subjects such as rape or incest basically as jokes. I mean, I don’t think I’m easily shocked but even though it was supposed to be fun, it wasn’t and, like I said before, rather unpleasant. To conclude, even though it is not really awful, it is pretty much one really misguided comedy and it is not really worth a look.

The story and characters behind this film are so laden with idiosyncrasies that they took me way out of my comfort zone. I don't mind when films do that but this did it in a way that was deeply depressing. Incest, gang-rape (of Jodie, naturally), homophobia, voyeurism and an assortment of people so stangely matched as to give the impression that it's actually several stories woven together. I tried hard to get a positive out of this film and simply couldn't manage it. The film begins, plays for a while and then stops at, possibly, the n-thousandth word because, apparently, in New Hampshire (or Bartledan) that's how long scripts are.