The Cider House Rules (1999) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

The fact that people hate a movie doesn't make it bad. In some cases, it might even mean it is very good. If a brilliant filmmaker like Spielberg made a film as strongly pro-Nazi as Schindler's List is anti-Nazi, and it was an even better movie than Schindler's list, people would still hate it.  It might be brilliant, but it would be repulsive to most people not named Manson or Hussein. And the better and more effective the movie, the more people would hate it, because Nazism is scary enough with the ugly face of illiterate and lunatic skinheads, but imagine how scary it would be if Hitler had been as sympathetic as Tom Selleck, and Goebbels as emotionally manipulative as Spielberg.

Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will is a pretty good illustration. She is probably the greatest female director in history, but her status will always be tainted by her subject matter.

But these are not really weaknesses in the film. They are, in fact, strengths. The movie delivers its message powerfully, whether we agree or not.

Other people hate it for reasons more closely related to its cinematic quality. For example, although the photography is splendid, it features some really trite and syrupy Hollywood music, some maudlin sentimentality, and an actor (Michael Caine) who, though a fine actor in many ways, went to the Dick Van Dyke school of dialects.

I don't understand the whole accent thing. Why do they bother to force an actor to speak in a dialect unless it's absolutely integral to the plot? Sure some great actors can do any dialect. I've told the Meryl Streep story before, where she was the only actress who got the Irish accent right in Dancing at Lughnasa, despite the fact that the others were Irish! (The story took place in a rural community with a special dialect, and the Irish city girls just never learned the right sounds). But, jeez, Streep is one in a gazillion. A lot of good actors can't do dialects and never even try, and it doesn't affect their reputation at all. You don't hear Kevin Spacey trying to speak Estonian with an Urdu accent, and people think he is a great actor. So why bother to force poor Michael Caine to do the bizarre Mason Adams impersonation he used in this film. All the screenwriter had to do instead was to insert about three words of dialogue explaining that he emigrated to America from the appropriate part of England - and no further problem. He could then have spoken with his own natural accent, and everything would have been hunky-dory. The geographic origin of the doctor doesn't affect the story in any way. In fact, it's obvious from Caine's accent and rhythms that he could not be from Maine, anyway. Given that fact, what difference does it make if he's from the Midwest somewhere (which his accent most resembles, although frankly I've never heard anyone speak quite like this), or from London, or from friggin' Katmandu? What Michael Caine is good at, perhaps better than anyone else in film, is to appear compassionate, down-to-earth and likeable on screen. For God's sake, let him do that in the most natural way he can muster, and just say he moved to Maine from London.

OK, maybe Cider House shouldn't have received its Oscar nomination because of some of its faults. But, faults or no faults, I am here to ask you to forgive all the film's faults, cinematic and otherwise, because they just aren't important when you consider the big picture.

The film really only has one underlying message. It argues that we should love each other more in general, our children most of all, and we should not create children unless we plan to love them. It delivers that message powerfully and simply, as Irving's novel did.

And when you get right down to it, everything else is less significant than that.

So watch it with your kids and hug them when it's over.