North Reviews

I love Rob Reiner and his movies, Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally, This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and Misery are classics and I enjoyed The American President and The Bucket List.

North did intrigue me with its idea, message and the cast, however these two things aren't enough to stop it from being Reiner's worst and most disappointing film. I liked the musical number in Texas and the mostly extravagant visuals.

On the other hand, the writing is incredibly forced and stupid, the Hawaai sequence anyone, the story is thin and has no idea what it wants to be and Reiner gives his clumsiest directing job here. The characters are poorly conceived and written, and the acting is lamentable considering how talented the cast is.

Elijah Wood I quite like, but I found him rather obnoxious and over-eager here. Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss are wasted, while Buce Willis' role could best be described as a career killer.

All in all, liked the idea but found the effort very clumsy. It is sad that Reiner stooped as low as this. 2/10 Bethany Cox

20 years later, this movie has pretty much become the stuff of legends. Indeed, when it was released, it was a massive critical failure and many considered it as one of the worst movies ever made. The impact for Rob Reiner’s career would be quite dramatic and the guy never really fully recovered from the blow. Indeed, back in the 80’s, Reiner was one of the most successful directors at work. Just check his track-record, it is quite impressive (‘This Spinal Tap’, ‘The Sure Thing’, ‘Stand by Me’, ‘When Harry Met Sally...’, ‘Misery’, ‘A Few Good Men’). But, he will never come back to this level following this debacle. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, was it really so bad? To be honest, I don’t think so. I mean, sure, it was really weak and completely misguided and a massive failure coming from such a heralded director but I seriously don’t think it is one of the worst movies ever made. Indeed, Elijahd Wood who was just about 12 years old at the time, actually gave a decent performance which is even more impressive considering the poor material he had to work with. Anyway, even though I don’t think it deserves such an abysmal reputation, it is still a pretty weak movie and it is not really worth a look, I’m afraid.

North marks the beginning of the end for Rob Reiner. From 1984-1992, he had a pretty huge run as a director (This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally etc.) and everyone thought that this film would be another winner. Then it got bad reviews (most notably from Siskel and Ebert), it bombed hard at the box office, and has been a go-to punchline ever since. With that, what went wrong? Elijah Wood was a young rising star with him playing the title character, who decides to divorce his bickering parents (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and find a new set of folks all over the world. You thought that might be simple, right? Nope. Once the plot kicks in, there is a bunch of offensive and unfunny jokes regarding racism, different cultures and poor puns. Plus Bruce Willis must have felt embarrassed by wearing a pink bunny outfit in his first scene. With Wood, Willis, Alexander and Dreyfus being the four main people in the story, along with a large group of talented actors involved in supporting roles like Jon Lovitz, Dan Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, John Ritter, Alan Arkin, Reba McEntire, Faith Ford and many others to count, how did they along with Reiner think that making North was such a good idea? Everything feels awkward and it's completely devoid of laughs. Following this debacle, Reiner bounced back briefly with The American President, but hasn't been exactly the same after that (The Story of Us, Alex and Emma, Rumor Has It, And So It Goes). North is completely infamous for a reason so while you're at it, watch either Siskel & Ebert's review of the film or the Nostalgia Critic's version of it, as they're more entertaining than that and stay far away from it at all costs.