[With his film version of The World According to Garp, director George Roy Hill] hasn't created a movie as potent as the original literary myth—that is, he hasn't done what Milos Forman did with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. But he hasn't trashed the novel, either, as Forman did Ragtime. Indeed, he's retained enough of the book's vitality and humor to make this film far more enjoyable than most other prestige literary adaptations, including [John Fowles's] The French Lieutenant's Woman. The big difference is that if Garp sees life "as an X-rated soap opera," George Roy Hill sees it as a soft R.

There will be two audiences for this movie—those who've read the book and those who haven't. I've seen it twice, once before reading the book and once after. The first time, I found it an unusually compelling, if uneven, slapstick tragedy about...