Tag: George Roy Hill

Rapid Response: The World According to Garp

Robin Williams is wonderful as a real everyman in George Roy Hill’s adaptation of John Irving’s novel.

Robin Williams passed away this week, and in every tribute written about him (including one of  my own) he was described as “a great comedian but also…” In another tribute this week I wrote that being a great comedian was enough because he was a wild man while doing it. But more often his praise as an exceptional actor was that he could take surprising, dramatic turns in movies like “Good Will Hunting,” “One Hour Photo,” “World’s Greatest Dad” or “Insomnia” while also playing the fool in “Aladdin,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” or “The Birdcage” or the exuberant hero in “Good Morning, Vietnam” or “Dead Poets Society”.

One movie that rarely crossed the threshold into conversation was “The World According to Garp”, George Roy Hill’s 1982 black comedy based on the controversial and bestselling novel by John Irving. Williams made it near the end of his run on “Mork and Mindy”, and what’s immediately surprising is how ordinary Williams comes across, considering he was famous for playing an alien. This isn’t strictly a dramatic performance, but come to think of it he probably never says a funny thing despite the movie being a comedy. Much of the comedy comes from the inanity and anarchy going on around him, and Williams has both the toothless likability as well as the energy to keep pace with it all.  Continue reading “Rapid Response: The World According to Garp”

Rapid Response: Slap Shot

George Roy Hill’s “Slap Shot” is a much smarter and interesting film than its cult status gives it credit for.

As far as cult comedies about hockey go, they don’t get any better, funnier, likeable or thought provoking than “Slap Shot.”

I say that non-existent comparison because for a cult comedy about hockey, “Slap Shot” is hardly as low brow as its scenario suggests. Director George Roy Hill (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting,”) inserts more ideas into the opening moments of “Slap Shot” than a similar film would dare shake a hockey stick at.

The title credits role in front of a ratty American flag hanging in a gymnasium as a chintzy band plays The National Anthem in the background. Before long, the social commentary, not the hockey or violence, is brought to the forefront as blue-collar Americans are losing jobs and housewives are on the brink of snapping.

Somehow, Paul Newman is perfectly cast as the aging hero, a man whose face in the late ’70s was the embodiment of a worn American everyman rather than the distinguished, old age movie star he would become. He’s thrown into a world where everyone wears their hatefulness and vulgarity on their sleeve. The movie is unabashedly despicable in these early moments, i.e. a little taboo and a little racist, and it only proceeds to get worse as the mentally challenged goons employed as cheap team ringers end up abusing every player on the ice. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Slap Shot”