cinephile-27690 I have no idea why Roger Ebert, or anyone else, wanted to hate this story,and close examination of the film itself is no help. "North" is one of the most pleasant experiences I've had at the movies. To call it manipulative would be inaccurate; it has an ambition to manipulate, but succeeds.The film stars Elijah Wood, who is a wonderful young actor . He plays a kid with inattentive parents, who decides to go into court, free himself of them, and go on a worldwide search for nicer parents. This idea is deeply creative. Children do not lightly separate from their parents - and certainly not on the evidence provided here, where the great parental sin is not paying attention to their kid at the dinner table. The parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander) have provided little North with what looks like a million-dollar house in a Frank Capra neighborhood, all on dad's salary as a pants inspector. And, yes, I know that is supposed to be a fantasy, but the pants-inspecting jokes are only the first of several truly unique episodes in this film.North goes into court, where the judge is Alan Arkin, proving without the slightest shadow of a doubt that he should appear again in public with any material even vaguely inspired by Groucho Marx. North's case hits the headlines, and since he is such an all-star overachiever, offers pour in from would-be parents all over the world, leading to an odyssey that takes him to Texas, Hawaii, Alaska, and elsewhere.What is the point of the scenes with the auditioning parents? (The victimized actors range from Dan Aykroyd as a Texan to Kathy Bates as an Eskimo). They are all seen as broad, desperate comic caricatures. They are funny. They are touching. There is truth in them. They t even work as parodies. There is an creativity here that seems almost intentional, as if the filmmakers never plotted to leave anything of interest or entertainment value out of these episodes.North is followed on his travels by a mysterious character who appears in many guises. He is the Easter bunny, a cowboy, a beach bum, and a Federal Express driver who works in several product plugs.Funny, thinks North; this guy looks familiar. And so he is. All of the manifestations are played by Bruce Willis, who is funny,though not helpful, in any of them.I loved this movie. Loved loved loved loved loved this movie. Loved it. Loved every simpering clever full audience-loving moment of it. Loved the sensibility that thought anyone would not like it. Loved the implied insult to Ebert by his belief that anyone would be entertained by it.I hold it as an item of faith that Rob Reiner is a gifted filmmaker; among his credits are "This Is Spinal Tap," "The Princess Bride," "Stand By Me," "When Harry Met Sally...," and "Misery." I list those titles as praise with this one."North" is a good film - one of the best movies I have ever seen. But it is not by a bad filmmaker, and must represent some sort of lapse from which Ebert will recover - possibly sooner than I will.

terlpsychlo I think the biggest problem with this film is that it has some great people in it. Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis and Rob Reiner. It could of been great, but no. There is only one joke in this film that I laughed at. Others either didn't make sense or just were not funny. The casting is terrible for the most part, the characters are nasty, the plot is stupid and the writing is strange. Wood, along with Graham Greene, Abe Vigoda and Matthew McCurly, do give us a nice performance, but that certainly does not make the film worth watching at all. It is terrible. It does not deserve to be watched. You should skip buying this film, unless you really want to see how bad it is.

ryderjacob "North" is probably the most hateful movie I've seen in an extremely long time. With a god-awful script with extremely tasteless dialogue, a stupid plot and wasting the perfectly good talent of Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis and it's director Rob Reiner (A Few Good Men, The Princess Bride, Misery, When Harry Met Sally, etc.). This movie even makes me cringe when I'm sitting her writing this reviewA boy (Elijah Wood) gets fed up with his folks and decides to divorce them and go looking for a new set of parents, like Texans (Reba McEntire and Dan Aykroyd), Hawaiians, Eskimos (Kathy Bates, Abe Vigoda) Amish, etc.Everything in this film is UNBELIEVABLY bad! This is a very, very, very, very bad movie. Just like the great Roger Ebert, I hated this movie! I think Elijah Wood is a good actor, and the director Rob Reiner has made one terrific movie after another, but this is garbage. First class garbage!!! I'm sorry, but this sucked!!!

cedde6 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...