Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine, who sometimes sounds as if he were reading his lines phonetically to feign an American accent), patriarch of a pre-WW2 Maine orphanage, tries to work both sides of the unwanted-children problem by performing illegal abortions. His protégé is aging orphan Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire), who frustrates Larch's efforts to mold him into his successor by running off with Wally (Paul Rudd) and Candy (Charlize Theron), a well-to-do young couple whose indiscretions led them to seek out the doctor's services. Homer works at Wally's apple orchard, and when his friend heads off to war after Pearl Harbor, he and Candy are tempted by more than apples. The film's title refers to the ignored rules posted at the orchard's cider house, and to the arbitrariness of rules, both moral and narrative, in general.

Directed by Lasse Hallström from a script by Irving himself, the film cuts out most of the novel's pseudo-Dickensian excrescences (but not a vaguely racist subplot involving Delroy Lindo as a quasi-villainous cider-house foreman and an excellent Erykah Badu as his daughter) while preserving its genuinely Dickensian spirit. When Larch says, "Good night, you kings of Maine, you princes of New England," the lump raised in the throat is not resented.