The Hotel New Hampshire

The Hotel New Hampshire follows the Berry family over several decades, beginning in the 1930s and continuing after the Second World War. Win Berry, a former schoolteacher, marries Mary and sets about turning an old building into a hotel in New England, drawing his wife and five children into the venture. Among the children are John, Franny, Frank and the youngest, known by a nickname. When the hotel fails to prosper, the family moves to Vienna and opens another one. The household is an eccentric one, and the relationships between the siblings, including the intense bond between John and Franny, shape much of what follows.

Tony Richardson directed and wrote the screenplay, adapting John Irving's novel. It sits between The Border (1982) and Blue Sky (1994) in the run of films he directed, which had begun with The Entertainer in 1960. Jodie Foster plays Franny, Beau Bridges plays Win, and Rob Lowe plays John, with Nastassja Kinski as Susie the Bear, Wilford Brimley as Iowa Bob and Paul McCrane as Frank among a credited cast of fifty-six. The production, a British, Canadian and American co-production made for about eight million dollars, took roughly five million at the worldwide box office, less than its cost.

Audience response has been modest: on IMDb the film holds 5.8 out of 10 from around 9,700 votes, and on TMDB 5.7 out of 10 from about 137 votes. A critics' rating of 6.2 out of 10 from fourteen reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores, though neither figure points to a widely embraced film.