The Cider House Rules

Another of the movies that I got the chance to record courtesy of one of the free preview weekends is The Cider House Rules. It's going to be on again tomorrow (Jan. 12) at 4:40 PM on Movie Max (one of the Cinemax channels), along with some other upcoming airings, so recently I sat down to watch it to do a review here.

The movie starts off in 1943 in St. Cloud, ME, one of those places where the railroad goes through but nobody gets off unless they have a darn good reason to do so. About the only thing in town is the orphanage, understaffed by a couple of nurses (Jane Alexander and Kathy Baker) and Dr. Larch (Michael Caine). Larch has been there long enough that he doesn't seem to have much will left to live, sending himself into an ether-induced stupor every night In addition to accepting unwanted children and, with any luck, adopting them out, Dr. Larch also performs illicit abortions, something which would obviously have been controversial in 1943.

Larch knows his time is coming, and indeed, the board of the orphanage has been writing letters about bringing in "new blood". With that in mind, and considering one of the orphans, Homer (Tobey Maguire) has already been adopted out only to be returned, Larch has sort of raised Homer like he would his own son if he had one. That includes giving Homer enough medical training that he could probably pass the nursing certifications, but being out in the middle of nowhere doesn't have the official education, and certainly not to be a doctor. Homer is also uncomfortable with the idea of abortions.

One day, coming to the orphanage is the couple of Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) and Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron). Perhaps one of the orphans will get lucky today and get adopted out. No, that's not why these two are here. Wally is a soldier in World War II, a fate Homer has been lucky to avoid thanks to a heart condition. Wally, on leave, has also gotten his fiancée Cathy pregnant, so the two have come here for the abortion. Homer decides that since he's an adult, this might be an opportunity for him to leave the orphanage, grow up, and see something of the world. Wally and Cathy offer him a ride back to the Worthington place for the night.

Wally's widowed mother owns an apple orchard, and Homer decides that this will do as work for now, and at least it will let him get a few bucks in his pocket during apple-picking season while he decides what he wants to do. The rest of the pickers are migrant workers who go from place to place as each of the various crops ripens and needs picking. For the Worthingtons, that's Mr. Rose (Delroy Lindo) and his daughter Rose Rose (Erykah Badu); along with two other men, Peaches (Heavy D) and Muddy (Todd Freeman). Amazingly, race is by and large not an issue here, other than the class issues of the migrant workers all being illiterate.

Life isn't exactly a bed of roses, or a bed of apple blossoms, at the orchard. Candy shows Homer around their small part of Maine, which includes her family's lobster cages and the ocean, something Homer has never seen before. But Homer and Candy begin to fall in love, which is going to be a problem considering that Wally is bound to return home sometime. The fact that he returns home injured only makes things more difficult.

I briefly mentioned the orphanage board wanting new blood. Larch expects that Homer is going to grow tired of the world and want to come back to the orphanage. Not only that, but Larch is making up phony credentials so that "Doctor" Homer can be the official doctor at the orphanage. (Surely that would eventually lead to one of the children's death through a medical error.) And among the migrant workers, Rose Rose gets pregnant, which leads to its own tragedies.

The Cider House Rules was based on a novel by John Irving, who adapted his own book for the screenplay. I haven't read the book, so I don't know how much was taken out for the movie, but what was left in the movie is pretty good, thanks mostly to the good acting performances. This view of the World War II homefront seems a bit too neat and tidy, however, especially considering the personal problems all of them are going through. There's also no mention made of why they two young black migrant workers weren't drafted to serve in the war.

Overall, however, despite some of the difficult subject material, The Cider House Rules is a well made drama for the time when you actually want to do some thinking as you watch a movie, unlike something such as my previous selection, Point Break.