John Irving has written the screenplay for The Cider House Rules, based on his own massively popular novel; Lasse Hallström (My Life As a Man, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?) directs, and although the resulting picture is a sweetened, diluted and more generally palatable concoction for movie audiences, the unmistakable Irving savour lingers.

Set during the second world war, Irving's story tells of Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire), a young man who leaves the Maine orphanage he has been brought up in by Dr Larch (Michael Caine) and gets a job picking apples and pressing them for cider.

The movie has the distinctive combination of shameless, manipulative sentimentality - in the form of tiny, vulnerable sick children - and a bizarre deployment of adult issues. There is race: the black workers in the cider house dormitory reject the rules put up for them by the white man. There is sexual abuse. And there is abortion. Put baldly, Dr Larch begins the movie pro-choice, whereas young Homer is pro-life.

But despite being handled explicitly, these themes do not carry the mule-kick they would in another type of movie - what I can only describe as a non-Irving movie - because the emollient "Waltons family" atmosphere weirdly neutralises them all. It is difficult to tell whether this combination is eccentric humanist optimism, or just evasive, unwholesome and creepy.

I confess I incline to the latter opinion, but Hallström's account of the proceedings is sure-footed and the film unfolds with confidence and pace; Tobey Maguire gives a strong performance as young Homer, and Michael Caine - though hampered by a frankly uncertain American accent - is watchable, as always.