Academy Award-winner Tony Richardson has adapted John Irving's 1981 novel for the screen and the result is an outrageous adult fairy tale. Everything in this domestic comedy about the Berry family is exaggerated — from its idiosyncratic characters to its zany incidents to its far-flung settings. Only the most adventuresome filmgoer will be able to look beyond the vulgar langauge and the strange antics on the screen to see the insightful messages about familial politics contained in the story.
Win Berry (Beau Bridges) abandons his teaching career to refashion a defunct girls' school into a hotel in a small New Hampshire town. He dreams of giving his children an interesting life. His wife Mary (Lisa Banes) has her hands full raising their five children: Frank (Paul McCrane), a homosexual who has trouble fitting in with his peers; Franny (Jodie Foster), a wise cracking and resourceful girl; John (Rob Lowe), the narrator of the film who is in love with his older sister; Lilly (Jennie Dundas), a petite and precocious girl; and Egg (Seth Green), a poor little tyke saddled with an odd name.
For the Berrys, the major challenge of life is discovering how to survive the doom and tragedy which keeps taking the wind out of their sails. Sorrow, the family's Labrador retriever, is put to sleep and stuffed; Franny is gang-raped; grandfather (Wilford Brimley) dies of a heart attack; and Mary and Egg are killed in a plane crash en route to Vienna where the rest of the clan has gone to establish a new hotel.
In Europe, Win's old friend Freud (Wallace Shawn) introduces them to Susie the Bear (Natassja Kinski), a self-effacing woman who has difficulty showing herself to the real world. The Berry children learn about lust from prostitutes and revolution from a band of terrorists in the hotel.
In the final segment of the drama, the family returns to New York City where Lilly achieves fame as a writer. Paul becomes her agent. Franny stars in the film version of Lilly's book and then gets married. John, having expressed his incestuous feelings for Franny, weds Susie and purchases a hotel for them to run with Win in Maine.
Richardson celebrates the Berry family's resiliency in facing the accidents and perplexities of sex, violence, and death. Through stories, rituals, hospitality and solidarity, they muddle through. Those who concur with Irving and Richardson's view that "life is serious but art is fun" will find that The Hotel New Hampshire makes perfect fairy tale sense. The ensemble acting in this film is commendable, given the dramatic fireworks exploding in all directions.