The Cider House Rules Review

And as a special in honour of Toms mums reviews i shall be reviewing his mum next week, but for the moment here are 2 reviews of The Cider House Rules and Tropic Thunder


The Cider House Rules

The Cider House Rules tells the story of orphan boy Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire) who is raised by Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine) amongst lots of nurses, this orphanage also happens to be a place wherein women can get abortions. Homer Wells is trained to be a Doctor by Dr. Larch and though he knows everything that can be taught to him he doesn't consider himself to be an actual Doctor.
Homer longs to see the world, which is partly why he doesn't accept himself as a doctor, because this would mean he'd have a feeling of being bound to the orphanage all his life.
Enter Candy Kendell (Charlize Theron) who is taken to the orphanage by her boyfriend Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd). After the abortion Homer "hitches a ride" with Candy and Wally to a Cider House where Homer decides to work picking apples so he can experience the world.
Meanwhile Wally goes off to war, forcing Candy to feel extremely lonely and begin an affair with Homer.


The Cider House Rules starts off exceptionally and i would be perfectly comfortable to say that it's one of the best starts to a film i've seen since Pulp Fiction, it sets the scene of the orphanage perfectly and features some of Michael Caines best work as an actor which allows for a deliciously heartwarming first 10 minutes which perfectly illustrates the relationship between Dr. Larch and Homer perfectly.
Unfortunately this changes as soon as Homer leaves for The Cider House, it loses it's warm feeling and takes a lot of point out of the opening scenes at the orphanage, by showing that this film isn't going to be an uplifting film about an orphanage, and this is my main problem with the movie because afterwards the film doesn't seem to be able to stick to a lot of it's main themes and lingers on a lot of them. A theme that is particularly lingered upon is the affair between Homer and Candy especially seeing as this seems to be one of the main elements of the film.
Before long the story changes and offloads a moral situation upon the audience which destroys all views that this film might be in fact just trying to show that it's about how one man develops throughout his life and because the other key elements of the film are present it takes a lot of emphasis off of them and never draws out what could be an exceptional story and constantly makes the audience think they're waiting for something which of course does happen but with an unfortunate and exceptionally too short climax.

I was dissapointed by Tobey Maguire's performance, partly because i was very impressed by his performance in Pleasantville, but The Cider House Rules shows that Tobey Maguire could be an actor that would become very easily typecast. He doesn't embrace the seriousness that his character needs nor the charm that he could portray quite easily from playing an Orphan. Though Tobey Maguire doesn't show seriousness as well as he should and in places is quite wooden he does keep one of the key parts of Homer Wells's character which is that he is very curious but in a respectable manor, this is something he does very well but at the expense of the other characteristics it overall isn't a very memorable performance.

Michael Caine on the other hand fully embraces the warmth, seriousness and often sadness of his character and is the perfect vision of his character and is a lot of the reason that though i did not enjoy this film as much as i would of hoped i still was able to keep a warm smile throughout thanks to the pleasantness of his character.

The Cider House Rules shows a very realistic and sometimes upsetting but overall heartwarmingly charming vision of orphan life and a slightly notable vision of how Homer Wells's curiosity evolves with age but lacks the seriousness to make a lot of it's main issues seem worthwhile. I am dissapointed with this film, as i think the audience will be because it starts off amazingly and has the ability to be a classic and gets there which a lot of films struggle to do but instantly throws it away to make it a slightly above average mismatch of morals.


Rating: ***


Coming soon......... My Tropic Thunder review and maybe a review of Being John Malkovich (though it will literally be the hardest film to review out of every film i have ever seen)
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