The Hotel New Hampshire, the Movie

by Pa Rock
Film Fan

There was a time back in the early 1980's when all of the cool people were carrying around a large, cumbersome novel by John Irving.  For some, that novel was The World According to Garp (1982), and for others it was The Hotel New Hampshire (1981).  (A few of the more pretentious types bragged of reading both!)   I was a young working stiff at the time with a young family. I spent my days managing the rolling insanity of students and teachers as a school principal, and many of my nights riding shotgun on school athletic buses where I continued to manage students until the wee hours of the next day.  And while I dearly love to read, I had little time for it back then.  I was not one of the cool people.

In addition to not reading either of John Irving's blockbuster hits of the 1980's, I also did not manage to catch either of the movies that were made from those two novels.  This past week I corrected some of that glaring cultural omission when I came across the 1984 movie, The Hotel New Hampshire,  streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Hotel New Hampshire is a family-life saga that centers on the Berry family of New Hampshire.  Mr. Berry and his wife worked together at a hotel when they were young and it was there that they met Sigmund Freud when he and his acrobatic bear stayed at the hotel where they worked.  Years later as the father of several children, three of whom are almost grown, Mr. Berry (Beau Bridges) decides that he isn't happy being a school teacher, and he and his wife (Lisa Barnes) manage to buy an old seminary which they turn into a hotel and  name "The Hotel New Hampshire."  It is basically accommodations for parents visiting their children at  the private school where Mr. Berry teaches.

After the new hotel venture begins to be successful, Sigmund Freud contacts the family from Vienna and asks them to come manage a hotel that he has bought there.  Later they return to America after the youngest daughter writes and publishes a book, and upon the family's return they buy yet another hotel.  They manage to name each of the hotels, including the one owned by Freud,  "The Hotel New Hampshire."

The story is simple, almost a fairy tale, about the pains associated with growing up and bears riding bicycles.  The movie version, which was scripted by the film's director, Tony Richardson, and John Irving, stands out for its stellar cast, perhaps moreso than for the story or the film itself.  In addition to Beau Bridges and Lisa Barnes as the parents, the film also presents Wilford Brimley as the grandfather and the athletic coach at the private school where his son teaches, a very young Seth Green as Egg, the youngest child in the family, and young Rob Lowe and Jody Foster as John and Frannie, the two oldest children in the family who are students at the private high school where their father and grandfather work.

A lot of the focus for the older children is learning about sex. A third older sibling, Frank (Paul McCrane) is gay, John (Rob Lowe) is learning about sex from a prostitute who works as a waitress in the restaurant in their hotel, and Frannie (Jody Foster) is enamored with a local high school athlete who leads his friends into gang-raping her.  And to complicate things even further, John and Frannie have feelings toward each other which leads to a prolonged afternoon and evening of incestuous sex.

But the bear riding the bicycle is great, and all-in-all The Hotel New Hampshire, as a movie at least, is an escape back to the 1980's when Rob Lowe and Jody Foster still looked like high school students and life, in some respects, was simpler.

 The Hotel New Hampshire is not a great movie, but it is one that is easy to enjoy.  And watching this movie is a whole lot less straining than lugging the book around - even if it is not as cool!