The Hotel New Hampshire (film)

1984 film by Tony Richardson

Orion Pictures (North America)
Anglo EMI Distributors (United Kingdom)
| country =
| language = English
| budget = $7.5 million the 1864 Hotel Tadoussac, on the St. Lawrence River, is among the locations. Tadoussac, a village of 857 inhabitants (2005), was once an important seventeenth century French trading post. Lowe said "I can't wait for the movie to open. I think it's wonderful, and it really gives me a showcase to do some things I haven't been able to do." As a guest on the January 12, 2022, episode of the podcast “Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade”, Rob Lowe said Matthew Modine accidentally broke his nose with a steel toed boot on a stunt gone wrong. Lowe claims the director was so mad at Modine, something evident during the whole production, he had his voice dubbed in post production by someone else.

The rock band Queen was asked by producers to compose an entire soundtrack for the film, but the producers later changed their minds in favour of classical music. Freddie Mercury had already composed the song "Keep Passing the Open Windows" and so it ended up on their 1984 album The Works.

This phrase recurs throughout the film as a catchphrase among the Berry family. It is drawn from a story that the Berry parents tell their children, about a street performer called "The King of Mice". Saying "keep passing the open windows" is the family's way of telling each other to persevere. Lilly kills herself by jumping, having failed to pass that open window.

When the Berry family is honored by the Austrian government, the hall is decorated not with Austrian flags, but instead with the flag of Tahiti, which is similar with its red and white stripes but has quite different and unequal proportions on its stripes.

The Hotel New Hampshire opened on March 9, 1984, earning $1,075,800 in its opening weekend, ranking No. 11 at the United States box office. By the end of its run, the film grossed $5,142,858 in the domestic box office. Based on an estimated $7.5 million budget, this can be considered a box office bomb. Rob Lowe later said "When some studios do get a good movie, a movie that's different, they kill it. Orion – I hate that studio; I won't work for them again for all the money in the world – releases Hotel New Hampshire with a cartoon of a bear: people thought they were going to see Garfield the Cat. Then they change it to a bicycle for five: people thought they were going to see the Von Trapp family."

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 6.26/10.

The film was released on Region 1 DVD on July 10, 2001. It was released on Blu ray on January 5, 2016.