{"id":2640,"date":"2024-08-21T21:30:18","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T21:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2640"},"modified":"2024-10-14T15:06:21","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T19:06:21","slug":"north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/21\/north\/","title":{"rendered":"North"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"North<\/strong> (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia Pictures\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, some violent content, brief partial nudity, mild sexual\/anatomical references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Rob Reiner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Alan Zweibel and Andrew Scheinman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marc Shaiman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Adam Greenberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 22, 1994 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Lovitz, Matt McCurley, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Reba McEntire, Lauren Tom, Keone Young, Kathy Bates, Graham Greene, Abe Vigoda, Richard Belzer, Ben Stein, John Ritter, Faith Ford, Scarlett Johansson, Jesse Zeigler, Alexander Gudunov, Kelly McGillis, Robert Constanzo, Jussie Smollett.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $7.1M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: NO STARS!!!<\/p>\n

\u00a0No review of North<\/strong> would be complete without mentioning Roger Ebert\u2019s infamous review of the 1994 debacle. He put it quite succinctly when he said, \u201cI hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. I hated it.\u201d He\u2019s absolutely right, North<\/strong> is a very hateable movie! It\u2019s terrible! It\u2019s interesting only in the way a train wreck is interesting. You know it\u2019s a horrible sight, but you can\u2019t seem to take your eyes away from it, you just have to see what comes next. Let me clear, that\u2019s NOT any kind of a recommendation; it\u2019s merely a metaphor for how wrong this movie is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can\u2019t believe that Rob Reiner directed North<\/strong>. The same director who made one of the best films about childhood (Stand by Me) does a complete 180 and gives us the worst film about childhood EVER! It would be bad enough if North<\/strong> was merely a bad movie, but it\u2019s also an extremely irresponsible movie. I\u2019ll explain that in more detail later, but Reiner must have been in full Meathead mode when he made this movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let me kick things off with a warning. No parent in their right mind should allow their children to watch North<\/strong>. In fact, nobody in their right mind should EVER watch North<\/strong>. It\u2019s the most morally and creatively bankrupt piece of sentimental drivel I\u2019ve ever had the displeasure of watching. Yes, I have seen Table for Five and I still stand by my statement.<\/p>\n

\u00a011YO North (Wood, the Lord of the Rings trilogy) is the perfect child. He excels in every single one of his endeavors. He gets good grades in school, he\u2019s a gifted athlete and audiences rave about his leading performances in his school plays. Every parent wants their child to be like North. The only ones who don\u2019t appreciate him are his own self-absorbed parents (Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus, Seinfeld). No matter what the kid does, his parents don\u2019t notice. They\u2019re too wrapped up in their careers and themselves. He decides to divorce them and search the world for the perfect set of parents. They\u2019re so shocked when they receive the news that they instantly go comatose. The judge (Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine) rules in the boy\u2019s favor, but makes the stipulation that he must physically be in the arms of his new parents (or the old ones should he change his mind) by noon on Labor Day. If not, he\u2019ll be placed in an orphanage. That gives him about two months to find his new family, so he starts travelling the globe in search of the perfect parents.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Guess what? No matter where North goes, no matter who the candidates are, none of them cut the mustard. His first stop is Texas where he meets the extremely wealthy Tex family (Aykroyd and McEntire). It doesn\u2019t work out because they want him to be EXACTLY like their previous (and deceased) son. He goes to Hawaii and meets Governor and Mrs. Ho (Young and Tom). It doesn\u2019t work out because they want to use him to entice people from the mainland to settle in Hawaii. He goes to Alaska and meets an Eskimo couple (Bates and Greene) who send their elderly grandfather (Vigoda) out to sea on an ice floe to die. Needless to say, it doesn\u2019t work out. The movie goes on like that until he meets the Nelsons (Ritter and Ford), a picture perfect couple with two other children. They live in one of those perfect houses in a perfect small town. North thinks that he may have finally found the perfect family, but something still doesn\u2019t feel quite right. They\u2019re great parents, but they\u2019re not HIS parents. It\u2019s a hell of a burden for an 11YO boy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Earlier, I mentioned that North<\/strong> is an irresponsible movie. Okay, I\u2019m about to tell you why. One of North\u2019s classmates, a truly reprehensible boy named Wendell (McCurley), uses the divorce as a platform for a worldwide anti-parent movement. He urges all children to hold their parents at \u201cemotional gunpoint\u201d and threaten them with divorce unless they meet every one of their demands. North\u2019s lawyer Arthur Belt (Lovitz) is deeply involved in this situation. Wendell has promised to make him President in exchange for his assistance. Wait a minute, let me get this straight. This so-called kid\u2019s movie actually encourages bad behavior? It certainly doesn\u2019t appear to discourage it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Wendell is more than just a bratty kid, he\u2019s a little sociopath! Not only does he start a rebellion, he intends to make a martyr of North if he decides to return to his biological parents. That leads to a very uncomfortable scene of a professional hit man chasing North around New York and shooting at him. Wendell makes Damien Thorn look like a saint. As for that lawyer, he\u2019s obviously an unethical half-wit. Who else would let a slimy little creep like Wendell call the shots? Can you say \u201cdisbarment\u201d? What the hell was Reiner thinking when he made this movie? As unbelievable and implausible as it is, North<\/strong> is no harmless fantasy. God only knows what kind of ideas an impressionable child might get from this. I shudder to think.<\/p>\n

\u00a0North<\/strong> is a total embarrassment to everybody involved, right down to the poor guy who swept up at the end of each day. Bruce Willis should receive some sort of compensation for appearing in this mess. When we first meet his character, he\u2019s wearing a pink bunny suit. So help me God, a pink bunny suit. It might look funny on Ralphie from A Christmas Story, but it looks pathetic and desperate on a grown man. Honestly, I\u2019m not sure who Willis was supposed to be in this movie. He shows up everywhere in different guises- cowboy, beach bum, sleigh driver, lounge comedian, Fed Ex driver and so forth. He offers the boy helpful advice through every step of his journey. Is he supposed to be the kid\u2019s conscience? I have no idea!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Reiner should be ashamed of himself. I don\u2019t think his career has ever fully recovered. With the sole exceptions of The American President and Flipped, it\u2019s just been one disappointing movie after another for the director who used to have the Midas touch. The list includes Ghosts of Mississippi, The Story of Us, Alex & Emma and Rumor Has It. He doesn\u2019t even have the decency to end North<\/strong> in any kind of meaningful way. The ending is a complete cheat! I won\u2019t go into detail, but it\u2019s one of the worst non-endings that I\u2019ve ever seen. All of the actors who appear in this movie have done better, but I can\u2019t be too hard on them since it\u2019s doubtful that they could have known how the movie would turn out. Poor Scarlett Johansson, she has to live with the fact that she makes her debut appearance in this awful movie. North<\/strong> isn\u2019t funny, it isn\u2019t touching, it isn\u2019t sweet and it isn\u2019t entertaining. It\u2019s a colossal waste of time and talent. It shows nothing but contempt for the audience and it should be treated with equal (if not greater) contempt.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North (1994)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia Pictures\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, some violent content, brief partial nudity, mild sexual\/anatomical references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Rob Reiner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Alan Zweibel and Andrew Scheinman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marc Shaiman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Adam Greenberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 22, 1994 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Lovitz, Matt McCurley, Alan Arkin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/North-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3528,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2640\/revisions\/3528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}