Full spoilers for The Cider House Rules, a movie released in 1999 based on a book released in 1985. You’ve had many years to catch up with this one, haven’t you?

The Cider House Rules(1999) stars Tobey Maguire, Michael Caine, Charlize Theron, Delroy Lindo, Paul Rudd, Jane Alexander, Kathy Baker, Erykah Badu, Kieran Culkin, Kate Nelligan, Heavy D, K. Todd Freeman, Paz De La Huerta, Erik Per Sullivan, and J.K. Simmons. It was directed by Lasse Hallström and the screenplay was written by John Irving, who also wrote the book.

It is often said that 1999 is one of the best, if not the best, year for movies, because lots of good ones came out that year. Like The Matrix, Fight Club, Office Space, The Sixth Sense, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Mummy, Notting Hill, Toy Story 2, The Iron Giant, Being John Malkovich, Galaxy Quest, Election, and Stuart Little. Some people like The Phantom Menace. And those are just the ones I’ve seen, there’s also The Green Mile, The Blair Witch Project, Eyes Wide Shut, American Pie, Magnolia, and American Beauty, that movie that inexplicably won Best Picture at the time even though it seems very creepy and now everyone knows it stars the world’s creepiest man. Sure, there were lots of other movies released then that aren’t remembered as much or as fondly. And this, I assume, is one of them. I’ve arrived late to the party here, but I don’t think anyone still talks about this movie. People still quote in particular those first four I listed incessantly. “Guns. Lots of guns.” “We don’t talk about Fight Club.” “What would you say… you do here?” “I can see dead people, Bruce Willis!” You don’t see t-shirts out there that say “Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.” I’m just saying it wasn’t the best decade capper for Paul Rudd. He fared much better in 2009 and 2019. Anyway.

IMDb says “During World War II, an orphan grows up under the tutelage of a doctor who runs an orphanage. However, he yearns for freedom and soon decides to leave in order to make a life for himself.”

• This is my least favorite kind of movie. I could not want to watch this less. For one thing, it’s two hours and five minutes, which is way too long. As soon as it starts you see the sweeping shots of the landscape, you hear the soaring overly sentimental music. And then the period piece costumes and actors come in. It’s not that I hate all period pieces. I hate this variety. It falls under a variety of films I’ve never enjoyed that feel, to me, bland and useless. In my mind I always see a red barn door. That’s my way of visualizing them. And I just don’t care about the red barn door movies.
• Other red barn door movies include October Sky, Cars, and The Lion King. Even August Rush, though I don’t mind that movie. Flyboys, too. I had to watch that in high school. Anything in your garden variety of 90’s-00’s biopics and period pieces that have that music, that no longer exist anymore because sentimentality is considered gauche.
• Homer Wells is a baby that won’t stay adopted by the families who take him. The first family didn’t like him because he didn’t cry. The second family beat him. So American accent Michael Caine keeps him and decides to teach him, as he steadily grows up into a dopey Tobey Maguire.
• Now. I don’t like Tobey Maguire. I don’t think he’s a good actor. I never have. I think he’s so clearly the worst of the three Spider-Man. He’s got a blank, nothing face, and he lacked every ounce of charisma and comedic tendencies that a Peter Parker should have. That works fine here.
• Tobey Maguire is learning to become a Doctor from the Ether-huffing Dr. Michael Caine Larch. Meanwhile he’s surrounded by child actors. Erik Per Sullivan, who played Dewey in Malcolm in the Middle for seven years and stopped acting. And Kieran Culkin, who’s gone on to have a more prolific acting career than his brother. I like Kieran Culkin.
• It is very depressing watching this family of orphans get their hopes up about being adopted, these orphans left by unwanting mothers. There’s one kid who packs his suitcase every time prospective families come in.
• “What’s an immigrant?” “Someone not from Maine.”
• Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire spend their days arguing about abortions, whether people should have them or not. Tobey Maguire argues not. Isn’t it fun that this argument isn’t still going today? The board of Michael Caine’s hospital/orphanage wants to get rid of him because he performs abortions so young women don’t have to get them off the street. One woman comes in and dies because she has a crochet hook stuck within her. Yikes.
• At 25:13, Paul Rudd finally comes in. His name is Wally Worthington, and his partner, Candy Kendall, is played by Charlize Theron. They want an abortion, it seems.
• I actually kind of like Tobey Maguire in his scenes with Paul Rudd. They just play it very straight, very normal. I don’t like Charlize Theron’s hair though.
• When they leave for home, Homer asks to go with them. He’s sick of being stuck with procedures he doesn’t want to give, taking care of children and being a parent even though he’s still a child. Michael Caine’s not happy. Neither are the kids. They don’t get that he should be able to live a life too. The kid who packs his suitcase, who tells all the adults that he’s the best kid and they should pick him, his name is Curly, and when Homer leaves he gets upset and tells him “It’s not fair. You’re too old.” They all see it as him being adopted.
• I don’t know, I guess this is growing on me. Ugh. I want dopey no charisma Peter Parker to succeed in life.
• DELROY LINDO IS HERE! HI, DELROY! YAY!!! I love that guy.
• Wally’s brought Homer to his mom’s house to become an apple picker with the “migrants” who stay there and do that job. They’re slaves, essentially. But it’s World War 2, so in terms of vocab purely, they aren’t. And they’ve never lived with a white guy like him before. So that’s sad, they’re good characters and life sucks. But Delroy’s here to be joyful and laugh and be the best.
• I like Wally. He’s not a dick. He’s not the greatest guy, it’s just that he loves flying and fighting for his country and got his girlfriend pregnant years before they were ready. As near as I can tell, he’s James Marsden in The Notebook if Rachel McAdams picked him in the end.
• I could listen to Delroy Lindo talk about what apples you should and shouldn’t pick for years. What a charismatic man.
• Back at the orphanage, Michael Caine is manipulating the board into picking Homer for their new doctor. He’s forged his doctorate and credentials to get him the job. If he tricks them into thinking he doesn’t want him, solely because he’s too good at his job, it’ll work. But Homer doesn’t want to go back, he’s falling in love with Charlize Theron.
• Fuzzy, the Malcolm kid, dies of his influenza or whatever breathing struggle he has. They tell the kids that Fuzzy found a family. Because that’s what they all want to believe.
• We all know Homer is going to go back to the orphanage. He doesn’t get to have a life, to live and fall in love with a woman that’s already in love with Paul Rudd. He’s doomed, basically. But first he’s gonna do a big kissy and fumbling woods-based sex scene with Charlize Theron. They begin an affair, reasoning that Wally chose to go on the Burma run.
• NOOOO, DELROY IS LEAVING!!!! DELROY, COME BACK!!!! I should rewatch The Harder They Fall, he’s really good in that.
• Oh, and speaking of Tobey’s lack of charisma and Peter Parker, J.K. Simmons is in this, mostly in montage, as Charlize’s dad. He says and does nothing. Booooooo. Larch still wants Tobey back. It won’t happen. Tobey loves sex, sex with a woman who, he says, looks beautiful and actually makes him feel something, unlike the women he grew up examining. Oh good, Delroy is back.
• The movie is called The Cider House Rules because there’s a list of rules that Wally’s family makes for the migrants, rules they don’t follow because they can’t read them. I wonder if that’s a metaphor. Delroy’s daughter, Rose Rose, is sick because she’s pregnant and he knows he has to help. I knew this was coming. What a heavy-handed development.
• What I didn’t know was coming, what I didn’t want to see, is that Rose’s baby is her dad’s baby. Delroy Lindo is a bad man in this. Damnit. Why can’t I enjoy the work of joyful charismatic actor Delroy Lindo? Homer approaches the issue at hand with tact and intelligence. “Is it true, Mr. Rose? Are you sleeping with your own daughter?”
• I wonder, if the roles were reversed and Paul Rudd were Homer, if this movie would be better. He lacks the sad sack sensibilities, but he is not, as Roger Ebert said of Tobey Maguire in his review, “almost maddeningly monotone”.
• Speaking of Paul Rudd, he’s been paralyzed by mosquitoes, from the waist down. And Charlize of course will stand by her man and take care of him. The affair is over. She’s been punished for wanting to have her fling with a wet sandwich. And he’s been punished for wanting a life that wasn’t his to have. And now he chooses to be a Doctor, to help Rose.
• If this movie was just the middle third, without Michael Caine and his sentimental orphan army and Delroy’s bad decisions and the unsubtle plot developments, it would be a solid movie. But it’s not, and I don’t like this anymore. This movie is bad.
• In the end, Rose Rose runs away. Delroy reaches toward her to say goodbye and she stabs him. He has Homer tell the police that he was sad to see his daughter run away and stabbed himself to death. And for some reason, Homer cries and they act like he wasn’t a monster.
• Dr. Larch dies from an accidental ether overdose. They tell the kids that Dr. Larch found a family. We get one shot of sad paralyzed Paul Rudd as Tobey realizes it’s finally time to head home and take over. Mind you, he’s always lived someone else’s life. First Larch’s, then Paul Rudd’s, because he fell for Charlize, then the life of the Rose family, and finally back to the orphanage. Depressing.
• We also get one last revelation. There was never anything wrong with Homer’s heart, Dr. Larch used a scan of Fuzzy’s so Homer couldn’t get drafted into the war, to protect himself and keep his adopted son with him. I’m surprised nobody realized it was a heart scan of a much younger boy.

Overall Rating: 3.7/10(I did not like this movie. It’s depressing, and about the cyclical nature of life and lack of choice. And also, how fucking dare they, quite frankly, make a movie with Paul Rudd, Michael Caine, Delroy Lindo, J.K. Simmons, and Charlize Theron but have it be all about Tobey Maguire?!?! What the fuck.)
Rudd Rating: 7.5/10(He’s in it for maybe twenty minutes. I liked Wally. I would’ve preferred the movie be about his World War 2 pilot adventures. Like the aforementioned movie Flyboys, but better and without James Franco. Hmmm.)

Next time, a boring, meandering rom com and the end of the career of one of cinema’s titans. Yaaaaaaaaay.