Review of The Cider House Rules (1999) by Amasa G — 18 Jul 2010

Emotionally - this movie is a pretty solid movie. There is nothing really striking about any of it unless you have a personal connection with one of the several issues brought up.

Intellectually this movie does nothing and goes nowhere and takes two hours to do it.

First of all the movie focuses on nothing. There is this orphan issue and this whole "who's my family?" identity crisis that could be a really well explored part of the film and make a great excuse for why they deviate so much from the original landscape. But that theme is very weak if explored in any length at all in the film.

Then you have the whole abortion debate. Which ends up getting qualified in the film towards one area and again, the debate isn't really settled with any sense of definition or feeling.

Then you have the whole love affair. This affair isn't really justified in any way and in the end only takes up a mere 30% of the movie's time and space. Although this does seem to be the major plot decider of the movie - there is no weight put on it and consequently I am forced to not care at all when it doesn't work out.

And as a result of all of this, there is only one thing different about the ending and otherwise nothing has emotionally changed. I guess I'm trying to say that this film is completely inconsequential.

And I think the only reason I gave it five stars is the same reason that people liked it in the first place - it does a really good job of being sentimental and conveying that Frost like depiction new england. It's a homey movie that does nothing for the spirit.