When Robin Williams played T.S. Garp in The World According to Garp, two totally original American icons met: a leading comic actor of our time and the character whose loopy adventures made John Irving's novel a literary milestone and runaway best seller. Fans of Williams' dramatic work in Dead Poets Society and his Oscar winner Good Will Hunting will also savour his Garp, a sweet-natured writer whose life is a weird minefield of violence, adultery, fatherhood, rampant feminism and eerie coincidence. Glenn Close (her film debut) as Garp's formidable mother and John Lithgow as a transsexual ex-NFL receiver give impressive support, earning Oscar nominations and critics' laurels galore. Their collaboration is "one helluva magnificent movie" (Bernard Drew, Gannett Newspapers).
