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Movie treatments of John Irving's books have to date met with mixed success; the first, The World According to Garp, was best, the decent reception the loosely based Simon Birch got notwithstanding. But this is the first to be scripted by Irving himself, and the result profits noticeably. Irving's heroes tend to be nobly flawed, clipped-winged angels, while director Lasse Hallstrom's (My Life As a Dog, What's Eating Gilbert Grape) frequently are beatific children, so it's an apt collaboration.
Narrated by Dr. Larch (a Golden Globe-nominated performance from Michael Caine), house physician at Maine's St. Cloud Orphanage, Cider House Rules chronicles the unexpectedly idyllic sojourn of Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire -- Pleasantville, The Ice Storm), a boy who as an infant was returned by the home by potential parents who were disturbed by his happy silence (Larch explains that many orphans are similarly quiet, having learned early that crying does them no good). After a second temporary adoption, this time by an abusive couple, he becomes a permanent resident at St. Cloud's, growing up in 1940s young manhood to be Larch's obstetric assistant, and serving as an unflappably laconic den mother to the other children. Which keeps him busy, because not only does the home play maternity ward to many unwed mothers, but also operates as a safer, more sanitary, if still illegal alternative to back-alley abortionists.
When a dashing young bomber pilot (Paul Rudd, from Clueless) on leave from the Pacific brings his equally elegant, pregnant girlfriend (Charlize Theron) in for the always unnamed procedure, Homer decides to remedy his dearth of travel, and leaves with them, much to the chagrin of everyone at the orphanage, taking a job as an apple picker in the pilot's family orchard near the coast. One set of cloistered, comfortable rituals gives way to another, but as was common during the war, complexities of love and absence intrude, melding with Homer's unique outlook to make him a beneficent influence to everyone he encounters.
Also graced by a capable cast, which features Kathy Baker and Jane Alexander as St. Cloud's gently mindful nurses, Kieran Culkin and Erik Sullivan (from the new Fox sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle") as fellow foundlings, and Delroy Lindo and singer Erykah Badu as itinerant orchard laborers with a dark secret, Cider House Rules, which has earned a Best Screenplay Golden Globe nomination, is another quiet movie which rewards reflection, straining only slightly at its author's pro-choice politics. But the subject is generally handled with subtlety. @bodyThe same can't be said for Dr. Larch's recreational ether habit, which seems to bookmark practically every scene. I couldn't help remembering Hunter Thompson's autobiographical admonition from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "There is nothing in the world more hapless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge." It will apparently make you lose an English accent, too. B
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