The World According to Garp (1982)
John Irving’s bestselling paperback - ditty of those huge, baggy, scattergun novels that Americans imagine bridle all human sparkle - is noticeably shortened and not improved by Steve Tesich’s handwriting, which loses Irving’s perceptions of Garp’s life existing within a much larger flow of experience. All we are left with are some of those telling symbolic nuggets from another cradle-to-the-sedate saga of a Untrodden England writer and his proto-feminist Mom. Williams is cuddly enough as the check whose talents in the interest nurturing a family are constantly undermined by a malign fate, and there is a presentation of some importance from Lithgow as a six-and-a-half-foot ex-pro footballer transsexual. But it’s the kind of movie which is brave - or stupid - enough to seek the meaning of elasticity without having enough arse in its breeches to warrant a reply. CPea.