North Review

North is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Rob Reiner and written by Alan Zweibel, based on the novel also written by Zweibel. The film stars Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Lovitz, Matthew McCurley, Jussie Smollett, and Scarlett Johansson. The film follows a young boy named North (Wood) as he becomes a free agent from his parents and travels the world attempting to find the perfect duo to raise him, all the while dealing with his own inner turmoil between returning to his own parents, and being guided by Bruce Willis in various roles. Meanwhile, Norths friend Winchell (McCurley) teams up with Norths lawyer Arthur Belt (Lovitz) to essentially take over the world.

North has been regarded by many critics as one of the worst movies ever made. To quote Roger Ebert’s infamous review of the film, he says, “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” While I don’t agree with the extent that this film is an offensive nightmare, I do agree that by no definition of the word would this film be considered “good”. I find it passable, a little under average and stereotypical as hell, but nothing that would make me grind my molars and mumble about how much I hate this movie, because in truth I don’t hate it, I simply accept that it is something that exists in this world.

Upon my first viewing of North, I must say I actually enjoyed it, which to be perfectly honest I’m a little ashamed of now a few days later. This film actually began my policy of not writing a review until a few days has gone by and I can actually think about the movie and sleep on it, because as soon as I finished North I sat down at my computer with a smile on my face and I wrote about how much I loved the wackiness and whimsical tone and how I enjoyed Bruce Willis’ character and the overall sense of adventure and childhood wonder the film presents, and the next morning I woke up, saw what I wrote, and deleted everything, because I realized that the movie was in fact a lot worse than I imagined and I was overexaggerating its merits.

I will adamantly address that this film does have merits. There are certain characters I find funny in the way I find a bad episode of looney tunes funny. It’s not that I find anything the characters say witty or charming or funny in the traditional sense, and none of the comedy comes from their performance or their delivery (except maybe Elijah Wood), but instead comes from the absurdity of the script that I foolishly let distract me from the gaping flaws of the film. I found them funny for their eccentricities even though upon further analysis I can see that their eccentricities provide nothing to their characters or the overall plot. For example, for the brief time he was on screen, I appreciated the comedy from Alan Arkin’s character, the judge, just because of how bizarre the whole set up was, but in the end his character was hollow and lacked exactly that- character. That’s just one of many examples of characters that are cartoons and not real people. I enjoyed the films overall tone, as upon the first watch, it felt a lot like the first hour of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a film I love and admire on an artistic and whimsical level, but upon thinking about it, everything in Willy Wonka was whimsical and fun because it enhanced the story and made me connect with the characters more and more. Every vignette made me marvel at the world they live in, or the silly nature of people, but it served a purpose to tell the overarching story, something North fails again and again to do. There are many ideas and jokes that lead nowhere or inversely, lead to somewhere it was clear they had no real idea of what to do with. The character of Winchell ended up being my favorite because of the exaggerated extent his character went to in the film, but afterwards I thought about it and asked myself, “what did I like about his character? His personality was a bit annoying and he had no emotional core, so did I like his character or the weirdness of his ‘arc’?”. In reflect, only one character has any real arc, and it just so happens to be the most unlikeable character, North himself.

North’s character is a strange illusion, because the film treats him like a Mary Sue, showing several characters instantly falling for him and showing parents around the world mad to meet him. the film clearly demonstrates the extent that North is good at everything and everyone likes him, and the only person who ends up really disliking North would be Winchell and his hired man, not for any personal reason, but because he interferes with his plans, making it feel as though the film is absolutely blind to the monster North really is. North is shown again and again to not only be an unlikeable brat, but a spoiled kid who lacks empathy of any kind. This is shown in the inciting incident of the film, a dinner in which North is ignored for about 5 minutes by his overworking parents, and instead of being kind and sympathetic, understanding the amount of work they do, he just assumes they don’t love him and becomes a free agent, simply because they ignored him, seemingly only a few times. No abuse, no real neglect, no divorce or separation or any other of the horrible things that could cause a child to actually suffer at the hands of their parents, just a dinner at their upper class house with a full table in which their parents who seem to provide him with every commodity available ignore him for a few minutes. The film treats him as though he is entirely justified and that the parents are neglectful jerks, which makes the average audience member hate North even more. Ironically, I personally think Elijah Wood knew how awful North was, because he really plays up how selfish he really is, although that is more likely to have been a directorial suggestion from Rob Reiner, and if that’s the case, why not have the whole film share that tongue in cheek sentiment towards North? Instead it feels like a vanity project written and directed by North himself.

This films side characters, or should I say caricatures, are strangely stereotypical and racist for the time, as this film came out in 1994 and portrays characters in a way that would be expected from a movie made in the 1950’s. there are 3 main stereotypes shown, those being Texans, Eskimos, and Hawaiians. Each one is as predictable as you could expect from the next and gives the characters a shell-like appearance that their most exaggerated and demonstrative performances could not make less uncomfortable. Making a film with characters that are stereotypical in nature is okay if it serves the purpose, but in this film, it seems more like the writer legitimately believed people from Texas, Hawaii, and Alaska behave in the way he wrote, although perhaps less heightened. This is not even mentioning the hideously profane French, Chinese, Mexican and African stereotypes portrayed, with the Chinese and African one being particularly tasteless. The Chinese one features North becoming a dictator and his assistant offers him a traditional Chinese haircut of a side ponytail, and in the African one, North arrives in a village where his new “mother” is shirtless, and he is shown to be slightly attracted to her, as North looks at her and says “You seem like very nice folks, but to be totally honest with you, if I lived here, I’m not sure I’d get much homework done”. This stereotype not only feels incredibly forced and unnecessary but ultimately worthless plot wise. An example of proper use of stereotypes is the 1996 black comedy Fargo written and directed by the Coen Brothers. First of all, if you haven’t seen Fargo, please do, it’s a masterpiece, but the point of my reference is that Fargo features several characters who are absolute caricatures of people from the Midwest, with the accents, the innocent view of people, and the mannerisms. The difference is that Fargo used these stereotypes to tell its story of how a small town hides more than what’s on its surface. Every use of stereotype in Fargo draws the audience deeper into its critique of small-town America and the criminal demeanor it hides, and its why Fargo won best screenplay at the Oscars and North was nominated for 6 Razzies. It doesn’t offer anything of value with its ideas, imagery, and characters shown on screen, and instead just throws whatever it will find entertaining into the film at its own whims. The children start bossing the adults around? Sure, why not. Winchell rises to power by leading a revolution in North’s name and essentially becomes dictator of the world? Of course, who cares? North is a movie whose attitude screams “let’s do it no matter if it makes sense or not”, and that is frustrating to watch.

Norths script problems continue in the actual plotting itself. Everything about the story feels incredibly forced and predictable. The film begins with a very typical premise with problems I already described, such as an inconsistent tone, a pathetic inciting incident, and unlikeable characters, but the problems don’t end there. if this film implies to follow Josh Campbells “Hero’s Journey”, then its timing is all wrong. Of the twelve steps of the journey, there is the ordinary world, call to adventure, refusal, meeting a mentor, crossing the threshold, tests and enemies, approach the inmost cave, ordeal, reward, the road back, resurrection, and the return. It’s a very simple structure that several films follow, and many that follow is near perfectly are very successful, such as A New Hope, The Lion King, Harry Potter, and The Matrix. Now, you may be asking, how does North fail at this, and we can go through step by step to show just how much of a structural mess North really is.

To begin, the ordinary world is hardly established. All the character and world building we get is tonally inconsistent and very basic, such as “North is a boy who is good at everything”, which is the extent of his character anyway. He gets the most establishment out of any character, and this film suffers as a result, as we like no one and understand everyone less so. Then, the call to adventure, as we’ve stated, is not strong enough. It’s a pathetic excuse for the story to happen and could’ve been further established if the ordinary world stage wasn’t so incomplete. The refusal of the call is simply not there. there is no moment of vulnerability or fear from north, just certainty and persistence, which for a stringer character could be seen as confidence, but with norths repulsive personality, its seen as arrogance and bravado. The mentor he meets gives him nearly no advice and while he does accompany him on his trip, we do not understand why he is helping or what his “powers” are. Just a side note about the mentor, who is played by Bruce Willis, I find it amazing that this was his follow up to Pulp Fiction, arguably his best movie since Die Hard, but then again Demi Moore followed up Ghost with Nothing but Trouble and Halle Berry made Catwoman right after Monsters Ball, so I guess anything’s possible. Moving on, the crossing of the threshold is present, but it doesn’t feel special because North barely fought for it, most of it was Winchell’s efforts that got North to any stage in the plot.

As far as tests and enemies, there is nothing that happens here worth noting. All that happens is the first 3 stereotype families. They are shown at first to be perfect, only to reveal some twisted truth, and then North leaves. There is no tension, no stakes, and no reason for an audience member to really stay invested. This is where the plot gets especially muddy. The approach to the inmost cave is supposed to be the dawn of the emotional climax, as it is the equivalent of the knight approaching the dragons lair, and in this movie, it assimilates as the amount of time north has begins to run out and he meets the nelsons, the perfect all American family. He finds them perfect in every way but is ultimately unhappy with them due to missing his parents. Now, while that’s a depressing predicament, it doesn’t work for a few reasons. Firstly, as I’ve said a hundred times, North is an asshole, so an audience member has no real sympathy for him. the only sympathy garnered by him is on the merit of his youth, not his person. Secondly, North expressed very little regret for his past deeds, and thus his sudden longing for his parents feels inauthentic and unbelievable. This could’ve been better established if he had only spent more time pondering on the morality of his mistake, but instead he has such a boastful personality that he doesn’t seem to regret anything ever.

In the ordeal, the hero is faced with a dangerous test of morals or physical limits. The hero has to symbolically die and be reborn, and in this the film does an adequate job. Winchell gets North’s parents to make a tape saying that they miss their son, which they cut up to say that they don’t care about him. This makes North disheartened and he goes back to New York alone, upon which the stakes rise to such an unreasonable level that the film loses all sense of believability, because in film it doesn’t matter if it’s realistic, only if its believable. Now, why does this ordeal work moderately? Because North actually goes through the necessary steps of this stage, which is an accumulation of all the lessons learned and a death, however it does lack a rebirth, which arrives a bit too late during the reward. The main problem with the ordeal is that due to the films tonal problem, it is difficult to take it seriously when the film is trying to be emotional and show North’s second act low point. During the reward, the movie goes back to its amateurish script with a level of unbelievability and shoddy writing that it shocks me Rob Reiner took this script at all. When North learns of the true tape in a scene that is again so cartoonish that it felt like the infamous 1986 B movie Hawk Jones, which is a police film starring all children, it is so laughable and silly that any sense of stakes or emotional resonance is lost. North learns of Winchell’s plot to kill him and escapes to find a comedian named Joey Fingers who helps him get home, and upon arriving home, when he almost comes back to his parents, Winchell’s hired assassin shoots North. First of all, the sudden escalation of stakes with no patience or attention to detail degrades the film tremendously, making it feel too goofy for the story its trying to tell, and ultimately it turns into a whole other genre of film and it becomes incompatible with the narrative as a whole. With the type of film north has shown to be, it would be more reasonable to have his final stretch home be a race against time, not violence.

Finally, the film actually skips two of the steps, defying a final encounter with the villain, where here it should’ve been a “battle” with Winchell, but instead it cuts to the end, where surprise the whole film was a dream. I don’t think I have to explain how lazy and lifeless this is, as it excuses any logical error, undoes any long-lasting stakes, deflates every second of tension, and of course, makes it so no one suffers any consequences for their actions. It annoys me tremendously when a film character doesn’t pay for their mistakes and instead gets away with everything, which is exactly what happens here. the film lacks any sense of stakes, and ultimately leads to an empty film with shills of people as characters. It makes the film feel pathetic and uninspired, and it’s not just because the whole thing was a dream, as that can work in certain cases. Mulholland Drive and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are two such examples where the film all took place within a characters head, but it was done with such purpose and thematic relevance that it heightens the movie and makes it better instead of acting as a lazy finale and excuse for weirdness. In Mulholland Drive, the addition of a dream doesn’t excuse elements but rather explains them and makes them more meaningful in terms of the overarching narrative, which is something North lacks- purpose.

The rest of the film can truly be summarized in a few words. This film is not a detriment to the creative and storytelling abilities of Rob Reiner, he’s still a wonderfully talented actor and director, and this is just his bad movie that every director is bound to have. The technical aspects of this movie are so dull they’re almost not even worth discussing. Everything about the films visual style and presentation is completely average and I cannot remember a single shot from this film being particularly good or bad, it was just fine. The sound and music are perfectly tolerable and the editing is invisible depite having no style. Technically, this film is cheese and crackers, perfectly acceptable and ineffably unremarkable. It’s a average film with a below average script, and however much fun it is if you turn your brain off, I would rather enjoy less things while thinking about them then enjoying everything as a brainless zombie. I wouldn’t recommend the movie but it wont kill you to watch it either.

North gets a 4/10