This is all winky and ironic, but the orphanage scenarios is still basically creaky. In connection, the three adorable kids, with their generic single complexity each, are pure syrup. But the design is really good, there are many very well worked out gags—central to the situation, or tossed off and thrown away—and we’d better just admit that Steve Carell is a major talent. In the end, because the Silas Marner situation is true (George Eliot, 1861), the Silas Marner situation works.