The Cider House Rules Reviews
Hallstrom's film could have used more dramatic muscle but is nonetheless a touching, old-fashioned charmer that ultimately satisfies.
Mr. Irving remains a disturbingly facile spinner of yarns in which the most sordid facts of life are glossed over into comfortably didactic homilies about the innate goodness of people. Yet, I was somehow moved...
Time Out
Top CriticHallström's humanism is possibly a little low key and romantic given such tough themes as abortion and incest.
[It] is a fable that turns into a 1940s New England variation on Charles Dickens. It is also one dickens of an American movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Globe and Mail
Top Critic| Original Score: 3/4
As paternalistic, puffed-up, and dull as a congressional debate about abortion rights.
The Cider House Rules isn't one film at all. It's two films, only one of which is successful.
Perceived as too soft by some and too weird and kinky by even more.
The Cider House Rules pales by comparison with the gutsier, more full-bodied adaptation of Irving's The World According to Garp.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A bit too still, and so predictable that some part of me kept saying I had read the book when memory told me I hadn't.
The picture moves with a grace and clarity that never wobbles into predictability. And no one in the ensemble of actors ever missteps: There's nothing overdone or overwrought.
It's not a story so much as a reverie about possible stories.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The first screenplay Irving wrote from his own book, and the job suits him.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
A far better film than other film adaptations of Irving's work.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Misses Irving's main gifts, despite his own best scriptwriting intentions.
The only way this House could rule would be in a much less competitive season.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Guided by Mr. Hallstrom and anchored by Mr. Irving, The Cider House Rules achieves a lovely unity that's rare in such an episodic movie.
Easily the finest film realization of an Irving novel.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
A deliberately old-fashioned picture that succeeds in nearly everything it tries to do.
A motion picture of visual splendor and emotional depth.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
[Lasse Hallström] has a near-genius for unpatronizing tolerance, and for seeing beauty in the world and nature and seasons without turning them into postcards.
Irving is lucky in his cast -- especially Caine and Lindo as the flawed father figures.
