Nurse Jenny uses a World War II soldier in a coma to get pregnant and get a son, Garp. Ever since he was little, she taught him that there is not much happiness in life, but that it can be a real adventure. At first fragile and shy, Garp eventually grows up into a strong man, channelling his creativity into writing an acclaimed book, marries Helen and bites off the ear of a dog that almost suffocated him when he was a kid. But when he moves to New York, Jenny overshadows him by turning into a famous feminist, gathering rape victims whom are comforted by transvestite Roberta. Helen cheats on Garp, while their son dies in an car accident. In a school, he is shot by an extremist feminist.
Long before "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Little Miss Sunshine", the unusual and demanding cult movie adaptation of John Irving's eponymous novel, "The World According to Garp" already established an opulent blend of drama and comedy, containing bitter, but also melancholic events in a world inhabited by eccentric characters—bizarrely, despite (or maybe precisely because?) of their bizarre behaviour, they seem somehow more human, especially in one Jenny's defining and unforgettable line: "You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure". It features one of the greatest opening credits in cinema—the subliminal image where baby Garp is slowly, little by little, "jumping" into the screen and falling back outside of it, with the blue sky in the background, as the baby is thrown up and down by his mother, in a stylistic depiction of joie de vivre and innocence before discovering the harsh world. The tragic, episodic events conjure up a strange mood, that seemed like "Terms of Endearment" with a weird touch back then, yet that does not prevent director George Roy Hill from inserting a few spectacular jokes, like the crash of a small plane with Garp's house, in a sight to behold. Dirty, honest and magical at the same time, whereas numerous awards went to Glenn Close as Garp's mother Jenny, and especially the excellent John Lithgow in the role of Roberta, the cheerful and thoughtful transvestite isolated in the society and torn between two genders, who finds his best friend in Garp. At the same time joyful and tragic, the story is denouncing every extremism (far right feminism, violence, intolerance, male ego...) and embracing individualism and "flexibile humanism", turning into one of the best movies of the 80s—and arguably the best movie featuring comedian Robin Williams.
Grade:+++
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