There’s three reasons a movie like North is still remembered. One, it’s the first movie featuring Scarlett Johansson in all her young cuteness as a child. Second, it features Brynne Hartman in her only movie appearance. She would go on to gain infamy four years after this movie was released as she would murder her husband, Phil Hartman, and then kill herself. It would become one of those odd murder-suicide that no one say coming because it didn’t seem anyone could hate Phil so much to do that.
And third, it produced one of the most notorious written reviews ever. Late critic Roger Ebert, who had won a Pulitzer for criticism, famously wrote: “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.” That sounds like someone from south Chicago reviewing a movie rather than an award-winning educated journalist.
And let’s not forget, Ebert co-wrote the crazy, insane Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and was constantly criticized by friend, colleague and co-host Gene Siskel for recommending Cop and a Half. Granted Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is schlock but it’s well made schlock. And Cop and a Half can easily be seen as a parody of the “buddy cop” formula. A movie like North has no redeeming qualities. Not many of the characters are likeable or relatable. And the ones that are are reduced to such cardboard cut-out standards.
Siskel agreed with Ebert on this movie and they both named it the “Worst Movie of 1994” on Siskel & Ebert. The jokes are terrible and come off as cruel insults the neighborhood bully thinks make him a toughie by saying. Even for 1994, the movie hit ethnic stereotypes that were offensive. While people bring up the “woke culture,” this movie feels like Rob Reiner, who directed the movie, tried to reach the same level of Mel Brooks, a long-time friend and partner of his father, Carl. But Brooks would’ve worked with the material. In Blazing Saddles, he was making fun of the stereotypes of old Westerns but he still loved them.
In North, there is nothing but hate. Played by Elijah Wood in a role he has spent the last 30 years doing everything to forget about, he comes off as the title character as a pompous, selfish little twerp who is mad because his parents (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) don’t give him their undivided attention 24/7. What a spoiled little brat! Alan Zweibel, who co-wrote the screenplay based on his book, doesn’t even bother to give the parents a name. And when North fakes a heart attack when his parents are arguing about their bad day, they immediately rush to his aid.
North apparently makes good grades, is a good athlete at baseball and excels in drama, where he is shown performing “If I Were a Rich Man” during a performance of Fiddler on the Roof. But he gets upset and everything goes wrong. He tells a mysterious man (Bruce Willis) who also narrates, dressed up as the Easter Bunny in a department store, that he isn’t too common. All the other parents use him as an example to their kids. But, and SPOILERS AHEAD!!, North is just dreaming. Yes, the majority of this movie is just a lucid weird dream North has when he’s feeling down.
This obviously explains the odd fantasy-like structure of the plot. North, encouraged by a buck-toothed annoying moppet named Winchell (Matthew McCurley) to divorce his parents with the assistance of ambulance chasing attorney, Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz). The news makes his parents comatose and they spend many scenes catatonic, even during the trial as their lawyer is played by L.A. Law‘s Alan Rachins in a joke that goes over a lot of heads. And the judge is played by Alan Arkin who acts like he couldn’t get out of the role and overacted so badly to spite Reiner.
I’m guessing the casting of Arkin is connected to The Bonfire of the Vanities, in which he was considered for a crucial role as a judge, but Morgan Freeman was cast instead. As a matter of fact, Rita Wilson, another cast member of Bonfire, appears as one of the parents using North as an example. This movie is so loaded down with cameos, I’m sure many of them did it for the money and use of their names in the marketing and advertising. (This would be something Willis would do later in his career for a big paycheck.) Kathy Bates appears as a possible parent who lives in Alaska with her husband, Graham Greene. Bates would later say she only did the role as a thank-you to Reiner for her Oscar-winning role in Misery.
Most of the big name actors look like they filmed their scenes in the span of a week or two. The budget was reportedly up to $50 million and I’ m sure a lot of actors were paid well for their short scenes. It’s been reported John Candy had been considered for the role of Pa Tex, a wealthy Texan businessman and rancher but he found the role so offensive, he refused. It went to Dan Aykroyd instead who plays his role as a Texan so over-the-top, it’s annoying after the first five seconds. Reba McEntire plays Ma Tex who breaks out in a song-and-dance number set to the theme song from Bonanza.
The judge gives North eight weeks to find a new set of parents or else he will be sent to an orphanage. North can also go back to his own parents before the deadline. Winchell sees this as a way to get kids all over the world to rally against their parents while Belt wants to be the next American President. The problem is it’s hard to believe that someone as annoying and irritating as Winchell would be given a good old-fashioned trip to the woodshed within five minutes. I mean, he looks like he weighs 80 pounds. How would anyone over the age of 10 listen to him?
Winchell is afraid that if North fails seeking news parents, it will hurt other kids who have used North as an example to do what they want. I’m assuming that Winchell’s behavior is part of North’s dreaming as well as how outrageous scenes are at the Texan ranch, the Hawai’ian place where the governor wants to use North for a marketing campaign and especially Alaska where everyone lives in igloos that have been modified. There’s a gag that planes landing in Juneau skid all the way to Anchorage for two hours. Not during the summer and even the northern communities such as Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, have commercial planes in operation throughout the year.
This begs the question was Reiner, Zweibel and co-writer Andrew Scheinman trying to make a movie for kids or a movie for adults. The gags go over the kids’ heads who may not understand the Witness reference when Kelly McGillis and Alexander Gudonov appear as an Amish couple. And many adults won’t see the gags as clever or funny because they’re not. To call them childish would be an insult. There’s a scene where North’s father tests parents which is a gag on the “Inspected By” tags in pants. But there is nothing funny about this. It’s almost like the Simpsons‘ Rainer Wolfcastle saying, “That’s the joke.” But it’s not funny.
There isn’t one joke here that works. As Siskel said, “You couldn’t write worse jokes if I told you to write worse jokes.” I think what happened was Zweibel, who was one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live during the 1970s, dug through a drawer of all the unused jokes during his tenure and just dumped them in this movie. And there’s a reason the jokes were unused. The comedy directing group David Zucker-Jim Abrahams-Jerry Zucker once said there were only a few deleted scenes of their 1980 hit Airplane! because there’s nothing funny on the cutting room floor.
This whole movie could’ve been cut out. Reportedly, Columbia Pictures, which was going to dump the movie in the winter of 1994, actually reconsidered for a summer release when the movie was edited down some more. The run time is 87 minutes with credits I shudder to think of what they could’ve thought needed to be cut out. The acting by everyone involved is terrible. At least Johansson has a reason. She was 8 at the time. John Ritter and Faith Ford play her parents in a WASPish all-American style family but they come in the movie so late and onscreen so little, there’s no reason to care about them because you know North is just going to find fault with him. Also, since they are the only white suburban family North visits, what exactly does it say that only white suburban families are the perfect families?
And at the end, North realizes that his parents do in fact love him as they’ve been calling about him. But the question is why would a department store leave a tween asleep in an armchair after closing? This was one of four movies released in 1994 featuring Willis. Thankfully, he ended the year with Pulp Fiction and Nobody’s Fool. And most of the rest of the cast rebounded. McClurey hasn’t done much since but he’s not much of an actor. My guess is he was hired as a favor. The good news for Wood is this is the type of movie that could’ve ended his career as it has so many other child actors. He made the wise choice by appearing in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and then The Faculty which reportedly led to him being cast as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings movies.
While you can’t really blame kids for bad movies, it has to fall on Reiner. He was able to turn a Stephen King novella into a great movie that became Stand by Me with young actors delivering great performances. I’m not sure he understood how to handle the material here. In an interview with the Archive of American Television, he said people took it too seriously because of his previous movies but it was intended to be a nice little fable. “I loved doing it, and some of the best jokes I ever had in a movie, are in that movie,” he said.
To me, it sounds like maybe he misunderstood the content of the jokes. When North shows up in Zaire where he stares at a topless woman, it makes me wonder about the mindset of this little guy that he only sees African people as bushpeople. Now, Ace Venture: When Nature Calls had jokes about African primitive people but it made the jokes about the cultural shifts and Jim Carrey was willing to make himself the butt of the jokes. But the way this joke is implied is to degrade African women as nothing but sex objects. And the Hawai’i governor’s last name is Ho so he can call his wife “Miss Ho” as a cheap joke because she’s unable to have children of her own.
What boggles my mind is Reiner is such a political liberal, why did he think the jokes in this movie were right for an audience in the 1990s? He had become a household name on All in the Family, a show that handled differences in a family and a changing society with wit and a brutal truth. If Reiner thinks this is some of the best jokes he’s had in a movie, it’s no surprise his career never really rebounded.
He made the wonderful The American President that was released in 1995 and then had a lot of movies over the years that have come and gone such as Rumor Has It and The Bucket List. But this movie will forever remain a stain on his career.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 