Have you seen… North (1994)

BY JOHN BILLINGER

Happy New Year.

Christmas has passed, and with it also passes the only days of winter that I actually enjoy. Winter, in my opinion, is only good during the Christmas season, but now it’s passed, and we have two depressing cold months to look forward to. And it is in the first month of January that Hollywood notoriously releases its worst products of the year. January is practically the dumping ground of film, so with that in mind, we’ll take a look at a few of the worst movies Hollywood has ever released in its history.

First up to bat is 1994’s North. This is a family comedy starring a then-up-and-coming child actor named Elijah Wood, and an entire cast of other well-known actors such as Bruce Willis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dan Akroyd, Reba McEntire, Kathy Bates, Graham Greene, and even more actors. It’s almost like who didn’t get to be in this? 

The film is based on a book by author Alan Zweibel and was directed by the otherwise critically acclaimed Rob Reiner, whose other work includes: Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, and A Few Good Men. Certainly, a very promising resume, what could possibly go wrong?

The premise for North is as follows: North (played by Wood) is a child prodigy who can’t do anything. He excels at school, sports, home chores, and everything else. Everybody in his hometown is proud of him, with the exception of his parents (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and George Costanzo – presumably in a universe where their characters from Seinfield got together). 

North gets fed up with his family and decides to get a divorce from his parents, and he sets off to search the world for parents that’ll actually appreciate him. Along the way, North constantly meets with a mysterious character (played by Bruce Willis), who constantly tells North in one way or another that he should just go back to his real family. There’s also this bizarre villain named Winchell (played by child actor Matthew McCurley), who is North’s best friend who somehow uses the publicity of North’s story to become the most powerful man in the world. That particular plotline makes about as much sense as it sounds.

Film Critic Roger Ebert had this to say on the film: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie,” Ebert said. “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.”

Given the basic plot of the film, it doesn’t sound too awful, more like a cute, harmless comedy that would get average reviews and then slip under the radar. Well, when the film came out, it got destroyed by critics. It currently sits at 14% on Rotton Tomatoes, ended up on numerous worst films of 1994 lists, was nominated for several Razzies, including Worst Picture, and bombed at the box office. Bringing in a total gross of $12 million on a $50 million dollar budget. 

So, what went wrong?

Well, the first glaring problem for most viewers is the depictions of the families that North visits. Over the course of the film, he visits a Texas family, a Hawaiian family, an Alaskan family, an African Family, an Amish Family, a Chinese family, and a French family. Each one of these many diverse families has one thing in common, which isn’t just that they’re all not the right fit for North. They’re all a bunch of over-exaggerated stereotypes.

The Texas Family is portrayed as the biggest cowboy rednecks this side of the Mississippi River, y’all. They all talk in an over-the-top Texas twang, dress like rodeo riders, sing a big country song (which is basically the theme to the classic western tv series Bonanza but with lyrics), and they also make it clear to North that they want to fatten him up so he can replace their dead kid who was also fat.  

The Hawaiian Family is not just any Hawaiian Family, but it’s the governor of Hawaii’s family. The scenes with them, as one can imagine, consist of really awful jokes, just as one about how the Hawaiians apparently don’t use the full alphabet. Apparently, they just use 12 letters, and this leads to some real bangers like this: 

North: That’s very interesting, but how does that help me get into college?

Governor of Hawaii: Well, since we don’t use the letters “b” “c,” “d” and “f”, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get straight a’s.

It’s also revealed that the Governor of Hawaii only wants to adopt North, so he can use him in an odd Tourist Ad campaign, which makes no sense and is honestly uncomfortable and disgusting.

The Alaskan family is portrayed in a cartoon fashion, not unlike the Flintstones. Just imagine the suburbs in a glacier. And sure, they gave the family a somewhat fair depiction by getting Native American actor Graham Greene to play the father, but the studio decided to have the mom be played by Kathy Bates in makeup. Yikes. 

Moving along from that: The African family is portrayed in a fashion not unlike what one would see in a 1930s safari movie. The Amish are portrayed as being stuck in the 1800s, the Chinese want to worship him as a God, and the French smoke cigarettes and watch Jerry Lewis. Each stereotype is all at once: awful and insulting to the audience.

Humor is also a common point of criticism when it comes to discussing the film. I’ve never seen any film that has tried this hard to be funny and yet consistently fails at being funny. It tries punchlines, puns, slapstick, running jokes, visual jokes, suggestive jokes, jokes about other people’s cultures, historical references, irony, satire, and of course, they make a joke about how “North” is someone’s favorite direction. No stone is left unturned when it comes to jokes, and they’re all awful. Not one joke lands. Even if one were drunk, no one would find humor in it. 

Then there’s the supporting cast. Two of the main characters worthy of talking about are the villain character, played by the other child actor in the film, and the mysterious mentor figure played by Bruce Willis. As stated, the villain becomes wealthy from North’s quest to find new parents. He is so wealthy that he’s become the most powerful man in the world. How he does that is rather poorly explained in the film, since when he starts out, he’s just the editor of a school newspaper. I don’t really know why this film needed a villain other than to pad out the runtime and give us a supposedly exciting climax. That’s the only thing I can think of.

Man of a thousand faces

Speaking of padding out the runtime, that’s what Bruce Willis’ character’s purpose feels like. Throughout the film, he appears in a variety of different disguises, such as a bunny costume, a cowboy outfit, a Hawaiian outfit, etc. In each one of his scenes, he gives North the cryptic answer of “Return to your family. There’s no place like home.” You see him so often and hear his message so many times that it becomes really obnoxious real fast. And honestly, the message of “There’s no place like home” has been delivered time and time again in much better made films such as The Wizard of Oz, and it seems like they want to do a similar family fantasy film with this concept, but they don’t succeed.

One page North definitely took from The Wizard of Oz is the ending. This might be a spoiler, but the ending pretty much makes the entire film pointless, so I don’t really care. It is revealed at the end that the whole story was just a dream that North had after a really bad day. That’s right, all the stereotypes, unfunny jokes, Bruce Willis cameos, and the child villain was all one big dream. It’s basically a sucker punch to the face after having to endure an hour and a half of awfulness. 

Sure the dream ending concept has been used in other films like The Wizard of Oz, but that was a better-made film, clearly set in a fantasy, and told a story that made sense in the context of the fantasy world.`North is supposed to be set in the real world, and in the context of the real world, it makes no sense, and by the time you get to the end, you feel insulted that you even gave this film anytime.

North was bad. It was insulting, unfunny, repetitive, nonsensical, awful, a waste of a lot of talent. I’m surprised after being in such a flop, that Elijah Wood’s career didn’t end up going SOUTH (sorry, I had to say it). In any case, stay tuned for more weird films in the future…

If you have any films suggestions to torture me with, please email me here: haveyouseen2224@gmail.com

Side note: Among the large cast of actors in this film, ten-year-old Scarlett Johansson made her film debut.