July 22, 1994

There’s an odd subset of summer ’94 movies: well-regarded directors making goofy fables about America, adapted from quirky novels. These include EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, FORREST GUMP and now Rob Reiner’s NORTH, based on the 1984 book 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, who was an original Saturday Night Live writer, co-creator of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, and co-writer of the DRAGNET movie. He adapted his novel with Reiner’s regular producer Andrew Scheinman.

Elijah Wood (between THE GOOD SON and THE WAR) stars as the title character, who’s 11 in the movie (like the kid from THE CLIENT) and kind of like a more humble and all-American Max Fischer. He wins little league games, stars in school plays, gets good grades, and is held up by all parents as an example of what their kids should be like. But his own mom and dad (Julia Louis-Dreyfus [TROLL, SOUL MAN] and Jason Alexander [THE BURNING, CONEHEADS]) don’t seem to care, and ignore him to argue with each other, which stresses him to the point of near cardiac arrest and existential crises on the pitcher’s mound.

So he heads to his special place where he goes to be alone and think about things, and there’s a subtle-for-this-movie joke that on the way there he walks past such traditional special-places-to-be-alone-and-think-about-things as a creek in the woods, a tree house and a pedestrian bridge. His place is a specific leather recliner in a mall department store.

Like the book, presumably, some of this is narrated, and you will recognize the voice as one of our best, Mr. Bruce MF Willis (whose other 1994 releases were PULP FICTION, COLOR OF NIGHT and NOBODY’S FOOL). In fact, I remember that I rented this on video at the time specifically because I knew it was a weird movie that had Bruce Willis in it. (I can’t remember what I thought of it.)

While North is sitting in his chair, Bruce shows up dressed in a pink Easter Bunny costume and strikes up a conversation. He claims to be a freelancer who portrays different holiday characters, but only because he wants to (he’s independently wealthy). While telling Bruce about his problems, they come up with this notion of being a free agent child with all the parents of the world competing to give him the best deal to be their son.

So when Bruce goes back to his shift, North falls asleep and has a dream where he does just that – traveling to Texas, Hawaii, Alaska, New York City, Beijing and other places, meeting with couples who try to welcome him to their lifestyles. They always seem great but then there’s something that scares him off, like the Governor of Hawaii (Keone Young, ALIEN NATION, HONEYMOON IN VEGAS, voice of Storm Shadow on G.I. Joe) and his wife (Lauren Tom, BLUE STEEL, MAN TROUBLE) for some reason make a billboard of him with his swim trunks being pulled down, like the Coppertone logo. He gets really upset and keeps saying the phrase “my crack.”

Other potential families include Dan Aykroyd (INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM) and Reba McEntire (“Spectator,” MAVERICK) as Texans in Cowboy Curtis type outfits, with a limo longer than a bus, and an Inuit couple played by Graham Greene (MAVERICK) and, uh, Kathy Bates (STRAIGHT TIME, DICK TRACY). The Alaska scenes are really the same type of joke as THE FLINTSTONES – what if it was all the cliches of a middle class suburban lifestyle, but in an igloo? So there’s a white picket fence and mail box made out of snow, a garage for the dog sled, a living room with furniture and a fireplace and pictures hanging on the wall.

I’ll let you judge whether it’s racist or clever or racist-clever combo. But the reason North decides to leave is that they practice something called “The Flowing” where because they have a new youngster in the family they can get rid of Grandpa (Abe Vigoda, JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO) by bringing him to Richard Belzer (FAME) to float him out to sea to die. Grandpa has a good line where he says, “Listen, if there’s a change in policy in the next couple weeks, feel free to track me down!” Anyway I looked up if this was a thing and Wikipedia calls it “a pervasive European myth.”

In each of the different locations North goes to, Bruce appears as a sort of guardian angel character. North always recognizes him as the other guys, but he pretends to be different people (my favorite is when North says “It’s you!” and he says, “No it’s not.”)

MVP of CITY SLICKERS II Jon Lovitz gets a few chuckles as literally ambulance-chasing lawyer Arthur Belt, who brings North’s case to trial before Judge Buckle (Alan Arkin, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, THE ROCKETEER), and it’s an easy case because North’s parents fainted when they heard about the case and had to be propped up unconscious in the court room. (Later they’re displayed in the Smithsonian.)

Personally I find the most annoying part of the movie to be the character Winchell (Matthew McCurley, later in LITTLE GIANTS and ICE CREAM MAN). He runs the (elementary!) school newspaper and the joke is that he wears suspenders and a visor like an old timey newspaperman, talks in cliches that adults in old movies use, knows everything because “I’m a journalist!” And then after North sues his parents Winchell masterminds a worldwide children’s movement, puppetmasters dumbass Arthur Belt to gain power and implies that he will be controlling him while he’s in the White House. The kid dresses like an evil CEO, sits behind a desk tenting his fingers, makes evil speeches, things that Wes Anderson could make funny or cute but no, I do not like them here.

On the positive side his evil office is full of arcade games, so we get some good shots of Jon Lovitz hanging out with the TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY game.

The last family North auditions is a happy, upper middle class suburban one called the Nelsons. The dad is played by John Ritter (PROBLEM CHILD) in a blue cardigan, the mom is Faith Ford from Murphy Brown, looking just like SERIAL MOM. This is interesting to me because it’s definitely in that same mode of referencing the idealized families of old sitcoms – in fact they’re named after characters from Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, and Ozzie and Harriet – but in this case I don’t think it’s an attempt at subversion at all. They represent a really nice family that would actually be great for North, no catches at all, but he still misses his real parents. (Note that the director himself was on All in the Family, and his dad created The Dick Van Dyke Show. Different from the shows referenced here, but adjacent.)

Most of the movie takes place in a dream, and it’s implied in the opening credits and early scenes that North’s pervasive European myths and what not come from his collection of snowglobes (!?) and the posters in his classroom, but I think it’s also implied that the cartoonish cultural depictions represent his limited understanding of the world from TV. While meeting the rich Texans the score works in the theme from Dallas, they do a musical number set to the tune of the Bonanza theme, he and his Alaskan family whistle the theme from The Andy Griffith Show together, and I believe the Father Knows Best theme plays while he’s with the Nelsons. If that’s where he gets his knowledge of course he’s susceptible to jokes about French people watching Jerry Lewis movies, Chinese food having MSG and women in Zaire having their boobs out.

The only thing is the waking world scenes aren’t significantly more grounded than the dream. There’s a whole thing about his dad working as a pants inspector who proudly pulls out his “INSPECTED BY 6” card during a domestic squabble. But I guess it’s only in the dream that we see him at work inspecting different pants by trying them on. Somehow this reminds me a little of a Roald Dahl joke. Charlie Bucket’s dad works at a toothpaste factory screwing the lids on by hand.

The cast is big enough that it has “Starring in alphabetical order” opening credits, but also there are some people who weren’t household names or who would become famous later. It’s DIE HARD henchman Alexander Godunov’s last theatrical release, in a scene with Kelly McGillis (TOP GUN) playing an Amish couple. Future superstar and two-time Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson makes her movie debut as the daughter of the Nelsons, while future disgraced TV star Jussie Smollett makes his second film appearance (after THE MIGHTY DUCKS) as a kid from school who ends up working for Winchell. Also Rosalind Chao (THE BIG BRAWL) plays the Chinese mother, and composer Marc Shaiman (who scored this and CITY SLICKERS II this summer) cameos as a piano player.

Before this Reiner had never directed a movie that wasn’t well received. His filmography was THIS IS SPINAL TAP, THE SURE THING, STAND BY ME, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, MISERY and A FEW GOOD MEN. They must’ve thought he was gonna make a new family classic – it even had a poster painted by John Alvin (E.T., COCOON, GREMLINS, THE GOONIES, THE LION KING).

But as you may have heard, it didn’t go over so well. It only made $12.2 million worldwide on a budget of $40-$50 million, so it was considered one of the year’s biggest flops. It was poorly regarded and nominated for a bunch of Razzies and won Worst Picture from the competing “Stinkers Bad Movie Awards” and all that shit. On their worst of the year episode, Siskel and Ebert both gave it the top slot, and Ebert said “I hated this movie as much as any movie we have ever reviewed in the 19 years we’ve been doing this show.” His zero star review called it “one of the worst movies ever made” and later provided the title to his book I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. The paragraph in the review actually has ten “hated”s in it.

Of course, when that’s the reputation, it’s not surprising that I find myself thinking well, it’s not that bad. I agree that it’s not good, it doesn’t work, I’m not clear what it’s trying to do, but I don’t really understand hating it. There are mild chuckles here and there, there’s the Bruce charisma, I respect movies that try for unique tones. Going just by the movies I’ve watched from the summer of ’94, I would say it’s a way more watchable family movie than 3 NINJAS KICK BACK, THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN, THE RETURN OF JAFAR, arguably ERNEST GOES TO SCHOOL and BABY’S DAY OUT, and also Moonbeam Entertainment’s DRAGONWORLD, a DTV movie released the same week that I intended to review but it was so boring I got nothing to except that there are some good stop motion, puppet and animatronic shots of a dragon. Maybe that’s what NORTH was missing.

NORTH was the first writing credit for Scheinman, though he’d just directed LITTLE BIG LEAGUE. His later screenwriting credits include the Jamie Foxx action movie BAIT, the animated DTV sequel KANGAROO JACK: G’DAY U.S.A.!, and the largely ignored 2010 Rob Reiner film FLIPPED.

I guess it’s fair to say that NORTH was when Reiner’s filmography went south. It’s been spotty ever since. At least the next one was AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT, a movie some people (including my wife) love. But it doesn’t seem like he’ll ever be able to generate enough love to fill Ebert’s hate hole.