The movie is good. I LOVED the book!! Knowing that Irving got to adapt his own novel makes me feel a little better about the movie.
As I remember the novel (it's been ten years since I read it), roughly the first 1/3 or maybe 1/2 focuses on Dr. Larch and then the rest of the story becomes about Homer and eventually how Homer comes home to the orphanage.
The first part of the book, about Dr. Larch's life was very important as it really explained, through a series of events, how Dr. Larch became the man and the doctor he was. I loved the Dr. Larch character in the novel and for a long time I put off seeing the film since I wasn't sure about Michael Caine trying to portray Dr. Larch. I thought that the section on Dr. Larch was almost like a separate novel. In the comments at the end, Irving mentioned that much of the basis for Dr. Larch was one of Irving's own relatives whom had experienced some of these same things as described in the book. In the book Dr. Larch does not have perhaps as much personality as Michael Caine's portrayal but clearly, he is a saintly figure. In the book, Dr. Larch reads to the boys, says good night to them in that very sweet and bitterly ironic salutation and when he does eventually die, he is eulogized as having practically been a saint.
What was not explained at all in the film but which was described in excellent detail in the book was that this particular orphanage was way up in the Maine woods, in a lumbering area. Most, or many, of the women who came to the orphanage, either for an abortion or to deliver, were prostitutes impregnated by loggers working the woods. The children were children of some pretty rough people whom had no capacity for taking care of these children. The children of the orphanage were about as discarded, unwanted and of little worth as could be, which makes Homer's ultimate success even more of an accomplishment.
I worked with a man whom was the product of just such a place, his mother had been a prostitute working the lumber camps up in the Maine woods and he'd spent time in an orphanage. He was, ironically, a comedian, and like a lot of comics I've know, he carried a lot of sadness around in him.
The children of the orphanage are all brought much more to life in the book than in the movie. The poor, sweet tragic character of Fuzzy was so much more in the book. Fuzzy dies under different circumstances in the book. The issues of the children wanting very much to be adopted and trying to make themselves more attractive to prospective adoptive parents was much better explained in the book.
Sadly, the character of Melony was not included and, as mentioned by another commenter in this thread, she was more or less (I'd say much less) represented by the Mary Agnes character, without any of the significant effect she had upon the story line in the novel.
I'm not such a big fan of Charlize Theron. For my money, she is not a very skilled actor and I did not care for her portrayal of Candy in the movie. All of the business in the Cider House I thought lived up to the novel and was probably the ultimate heated focus of the story. Wally's story is all told in much greater detail in the book.
I liked the film. I have to say that the film is a long way from the book. The book was outstanding in my own opinion and if you like the film at all I would say that you will LOVE the book. The book has everything that's in the film, only better, expanded, plus a lot of other wonderful stuff left out of the film. The film is more or less true to the novel, there were not too many Hollywood touches thrown in to tamper with the story.
After seeing the movie, I am now motivated to read the novel again.
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