Director Rob Reiner in eccentric spirits, but not quite getting the offbeat laughs and sentimental subtext he was going for. Extremely unfunny fantasy concerns unappreciated youngster who receives emancipation from his parents under the proviso he find a new set of guardians within 2 months. Celebrity-studded misfire is slick but not clever, with Bruce Willis in nearly a career-killing role as an angelic "guide" (he's also the film's narrator, in what plays like a last minute decision to fill in all the gaps). One or two fanciful scenes, but it needed more humor, less gooey uplift, and most especially an ending that didn't turn the picture into a pointless dodge. *1/2 from ****

North (Elijah Wood) keeps being ignored by his parents (Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus). He is all stressed out. After talking to the mall Easter Bunny (Bruce Willis),he decides to sue to become a free agent kid. He gets Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz) as his lawyer. The judge gives North until Labor Day to find new parents or go back to his old parents or be sent to an orphanage. He goes off on a worldwide search for new parents with all kinds of wild couples applying.

The basic premise demeans the idea of childhood and family. Other than that, there isn't anything particularly funny in this movie. I don't know if there is something about the Alan Zweibel novel that director Rob Reiner missed. It needs to have a wilder crazier wackier sense of style. It needs to bring the audience into a completely different world. The movie needs to be played like a kid's fantasy. Having Bruce Willis play various characters doesn't give it that magical feeling. This movie needs to be seen through a lens of magic. This is not simply boring or unfunny. This is wrong headed.

When "North" came out, it got a scathing review in Portland's newspaper The Oregonian (I found this out several years later, as I didn't know about the movie's release at the time),and Siskel & Ebert named it the worst movie of 1994 (I knew about this at the time). Even the previous reviewer on IMDb.com called it the worst movie ever.

When I saw it a few months after Siskel & Ebert named it the worst flick of 1994, I couldn't understand why people blasted it so. Granted, it wasn't a masterpiece by any stretch - we expect really good movies from a director like Rob Reiner - but it was interesting if absolutely nothing else. Featuring the title character (Elijah Wood) getting a divorce from his parents and traveling the world looking for new ones, I guess that it was little more than a way to pass time. Perhaps "North" had little more to show for itself than a giant cast: Bruce Willis, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dan Aykroyd, Graham Greene, Kathy Bates, Alan Arkin, and even a very young Scarlett Johansson. But when you get right down to it, a giant cast isn't any kind of crime. Like I said, I found the movie interesting if nothing else.

And to the reviewer who called this the worst movie ever, I say this: you don't know the worst movie ever until you've seen the dreadfully boring "Baryshnya-Krestyanka", which I saw while in St. Petersburg, Russia, last semester. If in fact it's based on an Alexander Pushkin novel, then Pushkin must spin in his grave every time someone watches that movie. The only way that I kept sane while watching it was by throwing out comments like on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (and then when I wrote a review to turn in, I dedicated the review to Bob Denver, who had died a few weeks earlier). My point is, even that last reviewer would have to agree that "North" looks like "Citizen Kane" compared to "Baryshnya-Krestyanka".

So that's my take on everything.