The Cider House Rules

A Movie by Lasse Hallström

With Michael Caine, Charlize Theron, Tobey Maguire, Kathy Baker

Christina says:

In the remote town of St. Cloud, Maine, Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine) runs an orphanage and a gynecological practice. The parents of Dr. Larch's "orphans" are alive and well, because his clientele is made up mainly of women who expect children they cannot hope to keep. He raises the children, supported by the two nurses Edna (Jane Alexander) and Angela (Kathy Baker), and tries to find new homes for them. Although it is against the law he also performs abortions. He trained one of his orphans, Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) to be his successor. The boy who has never seen the inside of a school already cares for patients. Homer disapproves of the abortions, though, even if he has seen more than once what happens to women who turn to some quack in their despair. This conflict with his mentor and his curiosity about the world outside St. Cloud one day make him give in to a spontaneous notion. He leaves the orphanage with patient Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron) and her boyfriend Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) and goes to Camp Kenneth to work as a picker on the apple plantation of Wally's family.

Abortion is a subject where emotions boil and worlds collide which leads to absurdities like the murder of doctors in the name of protection of life. The real problem, i. e. helping women gain control of their own fertility and therefore their lives is often (and sometimes willingly) overlooked. The same goes for the Cider House Rules, that gave the movie and the John Irving novel their name. They were set up by people who don't live in the Cider House, the dwelling of the pickers, and are not affected by them and they pay no mind to the actual needs of the people concerned.

Lasse Hallström turned John Irving's book into a solid movie with good actors, but the controversies are boiling on a small flame. Tobey Maguire wanders around with a pleasant smile and in the end finds out that things are not as simple as he thought them to be, just as he did in PLEASANTVILLE. In THE CIDER HOUSE RULES this realization is much less believable. It wasn't his fault alone that the movie failed to spark an interest in me, but he was part of the problem.

Irving packed the script that was based on the novel full with big and small problems without giving any of them the attention they deserved. Drug addiction, abortion, incest, adoption, deception, infidelity, no wonder that he was forced in the end to pull solutions out of his hat if he wanted to bring the various plotlines to a close.

THE CIDER HOUSE RULES takes place in a beautiful setting. The orphans are well cast, among them Kieran Culkin, Erik Sullivan and Paz de la Huerta, and aren't cute ad nauseam. The makers of the movie were also successful in casting the pickers. Of course every orphan should have a cynic with a heart of gold for a friend, as Michael Caine plays him here.

THE CIDER HOUSE RULES is a good movie, but as the statement on the abortion issue Irving wished to make if you can take what he said at the Oscars seriously it leaves much to be desired.

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Christina Gross

Last changes: 01/04/03