"The Cider House Rules": pretty good. The performances: --whoa...
I cannot, for the life of me, see what critics have found to praise in Tobey Maguire's stilted performance. I can only conclude, charitably, that Maguire suffers from narcolepsy -- fertile ground for George Romero and his zombie brigade -- (and a calculated reproach to drooling critics carrying on over, "Spiderman." Get a life, Ebert).
Having sat, painfully, through this film and experienced Maguire's incompetence up close,(and taking into account his similarly dismal performance in "Wonder Boys," and "The Ice Storm") I'm at a loss as to why any director would want to hire this glacial non-entity. The film itself was O.K., due mostly to Michael Caine, who is an old hand at this sort of thing: the crusty yet benign father figure bit is right up his alley.
But Maguire the Comatose kept sucking the life out of every scene he was in: Maguire is to the art or acting what Jeffrey Dahmer was to the art of cooking: i.e., repellent. Irving's novel was a good read, and this attempt to film it succeeds in many respects. If only Homer had been aborted at birth, this might have been a great film.
I cannot, for the life of me, see what critics have found to praise in Tobey Maguire's stilted performance. I can only conclude, charitably, that Maguire suffers from narcolepsy -- fertile ground for George Romero and his zombie brigade -- (and a calculated reproach to drooling critics carrying on over, "Spiderman." Get a life, Ebert).
Having sat, painfully, through this film and experienced Maguire's incompetence up close,(and taking into account his similarly dismal performance in "Wonder Boys," and "The Ice Storm") I'm at a loss as to why any director would want to hire this glacial non-entity. The film itself was O.K., due mostly to Michael Caine, who is an old hand at this sort of thing: the crusty yet benign father figure bit is right up his alley.
But Maguire the Comatose kept sucking the life out of every scene he was in: Maguire is to the art or acting what Jeffrey Dahmer was to the art of cooking: i.e., repellent. Irving's novel was a good read, and this attempt to film it succeeds in many respects. If only Homer had been aborted at birth, this might have been a great film.