The Cider House Rules Critic Reviews

It's filled with vivid characters and action. Beneath its modesty of gesture, it's one of the year's richest, most humane films.Read the full review

Lasse Hallström calms Irving's typically busy 1985 best-seller with a balm of the Swedish director's typically soothing lyricism.Read the full review

A touching, old-fashioned charmer that ultimately satisfies.Read the full review

That Irving adapted his novel to the screen himself and, even more, that Hallström directed it, makes Cider House a far better film than other film adaptations of Irving's work.Read the full review

The author's fantastical world of wonders and the director's tender-hearted compassion mesh into what is easily the finest film realization of an Irving novel.Read the full review

More honest than any conventional morality tale. Here there are no heroes and no real villains; the good guys are all flawed and even bad guys are sometimes capable of the noblest of acts.Read the full review

Has that Dickensian spirit wherein simple acts of kindness can bring an audience close to tears.Read the full review

The movie is pure pro-choice agitprop, as it tracks Homer's conversion to the cause of choice and posits the heroism of the abortionist. Pro-lifers will hate it on that point alone.Read the full review

This being Irving, the story straddles the sweet and the creepy.Read the full review