North (1994)

A great movie with a lot of star actors and actresses. It's fun and fanciful while it explorers deeper issues and meanings about ourselves. Definitely worth the watch with kids or the whole family.You should just ignore most of the other reviews. It seems as if people do not have a mind of their own and just keep spouting off about how "Siskel & Ebert didn't like it, therefore I didn't like it." So I guess 2 people speak for the entire world of film now? What a boring world that would be. How about you people actually watch the film and evaluate on your own accord; or is that too difficult? If so, then you should not be allowed to pass judgment on anything. What is the point of a review system when all you do is follow one or 2 people on what they think? Might as well just stop people from posting and just allow 1 person to make all decisions.

The film North (which was released on July 22, 1994) features a comedy-drama-adventure plot written by Alan Zweibel and Andrew Scheinman and directed by Rob Reiner. The story is based on the novel North: The Tale of a 9-Year-Old Boy Who Becomes a Free Agent and Travels the World in Search of the Perfect Parents by Alan Zweibel. North was Rob Reiner's first recent family-friendly movie. Rob Reiner also directed the greats such as "This is Spinal Tap (1984)", "Misery (1990)", and "A Few Good Men (1992)".The film stars a talented then 13-year old actor Elijah Wood as the main protagonist, North. At the time the film was released in 1994, Elijah Wood was starting to become a somewhat well known celebrity. The film also stars Jon Lovitz, Jason Alexander, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, Faith Ford, Graham Greene, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Reba McEntire, John Ritter, and Abe Vigoda. It is also Scarlett Johansson's debut film, who's gone on to be considered one of the sexiest actresses of our era . North (Elijah Wood) is a eleven year old kid, with busy parents (Julia Louis Dreyfus & Jason Alexander) not giving him the attention he needs. So, North and his lawyer Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz) file a lawsuit against them. The judge played by Alan Arkin decides that North should either find new parents or return to his own parents by Labor Day – a deadline of two months. If he hasn't found new parents or returned to his by the deadline, he will be sent to an orphanage. So North sets out traveling the world in search of parents who really care about him. His first stop is Texas where he takes a shot at getting to know potentially new parents played by Dan Aykroyd & Reba McEntire. That doesn't work out very well and he moves on to Hawaii and Alaska where he meets an Eskimo mother played by Oscar-winning movie actress Kathy Bates. The parents he encounters in the movie aren't funny, although they aren't serious and turn out not to be helpful to North. Either way, I believe the actors in the movie don't play their characters in the humorous way needed. The film is narrated by Bruce Willis in the form of a mysterious characters who follows North throughout the movie in various character forms - the Easter bunny, a Texan cowboy, a beach bum and a Fed-Ex driver. The narrator first meets North at a mall wearing an Easter bunny costume a role difficult to reconcile with Willis' usual tough-guy role. His role as narrator in the film really falls short. The narrator, in my mind, is not helpful to the movie. One example of this is the way that the narrator verbalizes to North about his terrible parents. Rob Reiner's biggest mistake as a film director takes place with creation of this motion picture, a mistake he himself acknowledged: "North is one of the worst movie that I have ever seen in my life!". I feel sorry for Rob Reiner with respect to his directing of this film, but he, of course, was unaware while directing the film that it would turn out as bad as it did and he probably shouldn't have even made the film whose greatest weakness is the screenplay and film production itself. (Alan Zweibel and Andrew Scheinman also produced the film.)The film North has one of the stupidest stories ever and I disliked every character portrayed in the movie. Even the film was really poor, I still respect Rob Reiner because it is his only failure of a movie; the only truly bad film he's ever directed. Here's my advice: "Do not watch this film! However, you could watch it just to see how bad the movie truly is!" I give that film a 0 out of 4 stars!

North (Elijah Wood), a bright and talented eleven year old boy (or so we're told) who clearly never had to go hungry but whose parents are so preoccupied with their career that they don't let him speak at the dinner table to dispense the wisdom his many gifts have bequeathed him (speaking of child-abuse), decide to "divorce" them and find himself a new set of parents more appreciative of his talents. Consequently, he meets a bunch of wannabe quirky characters who all desperately want to adopt him and is being helped along the way by his "guardian angel" (Bruce Willis).I've never really been one to join in on a mob. Crowds generally make me nervous and I usually regard any gathering of any kind with a healthy dose of suspicion. So jumping on any bandwagon just isn't me. Furthermore, I've always had a soft spot for the underdog, the ugly duckling, the universally vilified, always finding redeeming features to features that usually can't be redeemed. So obviously, when I heard of "North", the 1994 comedy from director Rob Reiner, with its stellar cast and very bad reputation, I was intrigued. Reiner has always been a director with a rather good track record, his movies usually ranging from decent to excellent. So how bad could "North" be? Or more accurately put: how does a bad Rob Reiner film look like?Well... "North" is a film that constantly struggles to find its audience and eventually fails to find any. As a film for adults, the "philosophical" narration provided by Bruce Willis never succeeds to soften the absurdity of the plot and as a film for children the whole thing is riddled with off-colour jokes and somewhat waspish clichés that make this spectacle quite inappropriate for that particular target audience. But where "North" really goes south is that failing to have a single joke that work, the film goes for the jugular and turns downright crass (the Hawaiian episode springs to mind, in that respect).Of course, one could argue that the film has its heart beating at the right place (like any other Rob Reiner film) and was simply a misguided effort but not quite. The fact of the matter is that "North" is never funny (which in itself is pure torture for a so-called comedy) but offensive and ultimately mean-spirited through its boring stereotypes and its attempts at poking fun at somewhat dodgy subjects, going as far as insulting the audience's intelligence with truck loads of ludicrous and stupid characters, the main villain here chief suspect among these, deserving of a good spanking before being sent to bed without dessert... for life.I so wanted to like this film, if only for the fact that it was generally reviled by everyone, which I admit is rather obnoxious of me. But I simply can't and must add my voice to the sound of the crowd as the song goes. Is "North" the worse film ever made? Well, I've certainly seen a lot worse. But somehow, thinking of it I feel like punching something. So that can't be good...

I don't need to say how bad this movie is because Roger Ebert and Doug Walker already have done that for us.It is garbage...no it's garbage of garbage that get spewed out by more garbage and compacted.Avoid this movie at all costs. I'm dead serious. The only thing that save this movie is Dan Akyroyd and he's just portraying a Texan stereotype.This movie makes The Room look good by comparison. Save yourselves from the black void that is this movie by watching something better.