The World According to Garp

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!!Superb!!!!
Review: This was one of those movies that makes you just stop and think about life. Garp, played excellently by Robin Williams, is a writer who's life is chock full of the trials and tribulations of love, death, adultory, and married life. Glenn Close (in her film debut) plays Garp's mother, a nuerotic -and often very annoying- nurse. John Lithgow is great as the transsexual ex-fotball player. the casting in this movie was spctacular. They couldn't have picked any better person for any role in the film. It was adapted by the magnificent novel by John Irving, whice I also loved. Overall,this masterpiece clearly earnes it's five stars.

Rating:
Summary: This is my favorite movie of all time!!
Review: This movie made me a Robin Williams fan for life, and also a John Irving fan for life. It is funny, sad, gripping and exciting...just like life. Watch out for the Undertoad!!

Rating:
Summary: The book is probly better!
Review: I have never read the book but I'm sure it is better than the movie. The movie had too much nudity and not enough emotion. Williams was a good Garp though!

Rating:
Summary: John Irving, where are you?
Review: Mr. Irving in response to this rendering of this novel, said they only got about 1/8th of the story he wrote. They did not do much better with Hotel New Hampshire--how do you do bears that talk? or truly recapture the horrendous rape scenes in World of Garp. Why don't they just leave some of the good books alone?

Rating:
Summary: Great performances
Review: Performances by John Lithgow and Glenn Close are certainly unforgettable. It is hard to believe that this is Close's film debut. As for the story itself, maybe it's better to read the original.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie
Review: The movie The World According to Garp was excellant. Although it is not entirly what I expected, it was very good. The director selected some very good actors and actresses, the characters were portrayed excellently. Although it was a great movie, I suggest reading the book before hand, so you can understand everything that is happening, and so you can imagine the parts that were left out.

Rating:
Summary: Williams IS Garp
Review: When I was told that Garp was going to be played by Robin Williams I was crushed. My preferences favored Dustin Hoffman or even the moody John Savage. But Robin Williams is the only one who could ever BE Garp. I now believe in the deepest part of my being that Irving wrote this book with Williams as the title character. Garp's zanny yet formidable quest for life, his passion and his tenderness are painted with such vivid strokes of almost supernatural understanding that you know that Garp and Williams are the same character brought to light on the pages of a fabulous book by a master of tall tales that have so much truth you know that it is all real. And when he finished, he sat back and said, "This is good." END

Rating:
Summary: Riyach
Review: I saw this movie by mistake when I was ten years old. I did not truely understand it. My parents didnt care because it featured Robin Williams, you know Mork. They had no idea of all the sexual content, bewilderment followed and 15 years later were almost forgotten, until I read the book in college. I felt affected by this movie then and when I viewed it recenly, the same feelings were conjured up. I highly recommend this film, its tragic, funny and at times you will laugh at times that seem very very inappropriate. The characters are rich and off-wall.

Rating:
Summary: BREEZY "TERMS OF ENDEARMENT", BUT THEN IT GETS PREACHY
Review: For all its lovely odysseys, The World According to Garp is an oddly unaffecting movie. Interesting, yes. Original, occasionally. Amusing, often. But despite the fact that it sets itself up as a tragicomic social satire walking several different ropes at the same time, not much of it really stays with you after it's over.

One minute we have a character gaping doe-eyed at his children, speaking lovingly about the joys of fatherhood, and the next minute he's taking an iron pipe to an electrician's truck because the electrician was driving too fast through the neighborhood. Which is all fine, thanks in no small measure to the convincing wigs of John Lithgow as a transvestite.

Holes begin to appear when all this reverie is broken with grave issues like a cultic feminist group, members of which cut off their tongues in protest for a young girl's rape. Deep. Our protagonist Garp wishes to lead a happy life of apathetic normalcy (not altogether different from what the audience wants, really) but his mother has other plans. When the film gets preachy, we have little choice but to squirm and play along.

To be fair, the film is a very decent rental ride though, sporting a fairly blithe tone, a sprawling scope to appeal to different pallettes, and some fabulous performances all round (you can see why Williams shot to fame shortly after this film), both on-screen as well as off-screen (in the form of the best Beatles number ever).

A recommendation somewhere between mildly pleasing and terrific.

Rating:
Summary: Riyach
Review: This is one of the best movies of all time. It's creativity and intelligence say a lot about the human race, even though often wayward, contains love in the places you least expect it to be.
Robin Williams is magnificent in this film. It is a little odd, but you leave the film with a lot of love and appreciation for the human race and a lot of sadness about the human race's shortcomings. The movie comes from a brilliant John Irving novel!

Jeffrey McAndrew
author of "Our Brown-Eyed Boy"