North (1994)

This is the movie your mother warned you about.

This is the movie that topped every Worst list of 1994.

This is the movie that made movie projectors the world over fear electricity.

This is the movie that made Roger Ebert use the word "hated" more than in any other review he'd done before or since.

This is the movie that forced Rob Reiner to return all the awards he won for directing Misery and The Princess Bride (okay, maybe that one needs some verification, but anyway...).

And you know what...?

I liked it. A lot.

In fact, this one is probably my favorite Elijah Wood movie.

Popular opinion (and box office receipts) be damned, North is a funny, sustained comedy that keeps its momentum from beginning to end. In fact, it holds up better than a lot of other so-called comedies that have come out in recent years.

Then why no love from the rest of humanity?

Before I get too far ahead of myself, North was adapted from a book (believe it or not) written by Alan Zweibel, who also adapted the screenplay; not to mention the fact that Zweibel was the writer behind such works as 1987's Dragnet, plus many episodes of "It's Garry Shandling's Show", "Saturday Night Live" and all five episodes of NBC's long-forgotten "The New Show". Hey, can't bat a thousand all the time.

The story is one that is probably already known by you since, after all, you're reading a site like mine as it is. But regardless: North (Elijah Wood) is a perfect young boy who gets good grades in school, does great in sports, acts and sings well in all school productions - it's the kind of thing where parents the world over use North as the barometer by which their own children should measure their own success as children. Thing is, not all is perfect in North's world since he feels that his parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander) pay more attention to the irritations and demands in their own lives than they do to him.

Every kid's dilemma: not enough appreciation from your parents who seem to take you for granted.

A schoolmate of North's named Winchell (Matthew McCurley), seemingly named and modeled after the self-same story-hungry reporter, convinces North that what he needs is new parents. Warming to this idea, North is quickly befriended by over-reaching lawyer Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz), who guides North through the legal system and, once his emancipation is won, North is on a quest to find new and more attentive parents.

His travels take him from Texas to Hawaii to Alaska to Africa to France to Amish country to all other points in-between...but will he find new parents before he must become a ward of the state? And what is Winchell's stake in all of this?

One thing that immediately warmed me to this movie was the presence of Wood. He was, without a doubt, one of the most engaging, talented and charming of the child actors of his day. He certainly acted rings around the likes of Macaulay Culkin and proved his chops in films like Paradise, Forever Young and The Adventures of Huck Finn. Of course, his career since then speaks for itself, but in North, Elijah has a self-aware sensibility to his acting and facial expressions that cannot be beaten, and is effortlessly charming in every scene.

But what about his co-stars? I already mentioned Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander and Lovitz, but there are also parts, big and small, for actors the likes of Alan Arkin (as a court judge who specializes in family cases and one-liners), Dan Aykroyd and Reba McEntire (as two big and loud Texan parents), Graham Greene, Kathy Bates, Abe Vigoda and Richard Belzer (as your average Alaskans), Ben Stein (as a monotone - surprise! - museum guide), Alexander Godunov and Kelly McGillis (as soft-spoken Amish parents), Faith Ford, John Ritter and a very young Scarlett Johansson (as a typical perfect American family). This is a big-name cast for a movie in 1994, and all of them do well, I thought.

But the biggest recurring character is Bruce Willis, who plays more parts in this movie than he has in any other movie. He's kind of a guardian angel of North's who pops up in various guises as an Easter Bunny, a ranch hand, a beach comber, a sleigh driver, a lounge comedian, and a Federal Express driver who's probably the best form of advertisement the company's had in a decade. North seems to get the same message from each incarnation of Willis each time he sees him: every kid needs his parents. There's worse messages for a movie to have, and it at least works for a kid-oriented comedy like this one.

I can see where a lot of people would think that North was a bad movie. After all, it takes the idea of kids separating from their parents even more lightly than 1984's Irreconcilable Differences, in which Drew Barrymore divorced from parents Ryan O'Neal and Shelley Long. Of course, for a movie as purely spun from fantasy as this one, keeping things real is the last thing on Reiner's and Zweibel's minds.

Comedy is the main course being served at this dinner and everyone feasts on it as if they were starving. Practically every line in North is a setup for a one-liner, sight gag or double-take. There's as much visual humor here as your average Marx Brothers movie contains. As a matter of fact, every time I watch North I find myself repeating lines like "There's no place like home...with the possible exception of Vegas when Sinatra's in town." This movie is full of dialogue that brings a laugh, chuckle, appreciative giggle or even an outright guffaw.

Like I said, I enjoy North a lot. In spite of all the good things and positive influence of humor, this still earned only $7 million on a $40 million budget. It's a shame, really; this doesn't even have a legitimate DVD release, and I think I have one of the few VHS copies left of North (grabbed for $2 - a steal from what I've found online), so anyone who wants to see this movie is going to have to search long and hard for it. Like any treasure worth having, North is going to be a tough one to dig for.

Again, though, I have to ask why it is that no one else seems to like this film. Insulting stereotypes is the main thing I keep hearing, but nothing here is any more nor less stereotypical than what you'd see in a normal 1940s cartoon. I didn't find them all that insulting, though. It's not like Reiner and company are intentionally setting out to insult anyone - it's like Bugs Bunny putting on a kilt and doing his Scottish brogue: it's all kind of unaffected by criticism.

In the end, North is Elijah Wood's film and he runs with it. This is a fun film and has some funny moments.

Of course, with a review like this, I feel like the only cheerleader for a team who's never won a game.

Am I, though?

Is this the only positive review for North to be found anywhere? I wouldn't think so but then again there are people who think the world of The Underground Comedy Movie.

Am I the only one in the world (besides Rob Reiner) who finds any entertainment value in this film? There would have to be more people than that who have a sense of humor that isn't so easily influenced by the ACLU that it would work only in the realms of Nickelodeon or The Disney Channel.

Does Elijah Wood lie awake at night worrying more about this movie than he does Radio Flyer? I doubt that any movie in the world is worse than Radio Flyer. And believe me - I've looked....

In any event, the worst damage that can be done by a movie like North is to make a kid look at his parents with as much disdain as if they were Jason Alexander.

And with that, as far as I'm concerned....


















....so there.