Yeah, but have you read the book?

Adapting John Irving is a tricky business. Irving is first and foremost a novelist and his writing is best in that forum. Most of his adaptations suffer because the screenwriters are unable to turn these characters into three-dimensional people. All of the symbolism and foreshadowing keeps the characters from being much more than the tools of the storytellers. The Door in the Floor is yet another example of this. Taken from the first third of Irving's A Widow for One Year, the film contains another in an ongoing series of truly fine performances by Jeff Bridges. But even with all of the remarkable skills that have made him arguably the most naturalistic actor currently working, his character still feels like a writer's creation and not a real person. If Bridges is unable to fully overcome the Irving problem, I'm not sure it can ever be solved. The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp are the two best Irving adaptations and I think they work for similar reasons. Both of the films concentrate almost exclusively on the lead characters and the audience is allowed to see how fully-rounded they are. We accept the supporting characters as exactly that so we mind far less when they are underdeveloped. When Irving adaptations attempt to deal at length with more than one character (The Hotel New Hampshire, Door in the Floor) Irving's nearly perfect story structure is more apparent and the films come off as too schematic - a viewer can see the girders holding the whole story together.

None of this is a comment on the books themselves. Every Irving I have read has been very entertaining. I find it noteworthy that the only book he himself adapted, Cider House Rules, is one of the very best adaptations of his work. This indicates to me that he understands the pitfalls of adapting a novel for the screen. His discussion of this subject on the DVD of Door in the Floor offers an enlightening lesson on the topic.