Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

North Blu-ray Movie Review

'North' goes south.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 13, 2017

One of the chief joys of watching the old Siskel and Ebert weekly roundup of new film releases was seeing the two get into sometimes heated arguments about the worth, or lack thereof, of any given film. One time when these two venerable reviewing institutions were in complete agreement was with regard to North, Rob Reiner’s much lambasted film from 1994 which both Siskel and Ebert deemed as the worst of the year. North came in for such an outsized critical drubbing that it’s become something of a legend in “bad movie” circles, to the point that some coming to the film “new” (so to speak) may have a hard time understanding why a basically harmless fable which more or less revisits that hoary old “there’s no place like home” trope from The Wizard of Oz should invite such unrequited umbrage. North is often more than a little forced, and it’s probably way too self aware for its own good, but I personally could think of any number of films I’d rate above (below?) it as a veritable “worst”. In a way, North could be an interesting double feature for some enterprising fans to schedule in tandem with The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, since both films feature child prodigies who shear themselves away from their families to have globe trotting adventures. In young master Spivet’s case, the separation of child and parent is a side effect of Spivet’s scientific virtuosity, which takes him on a magical trip to the Smithsonian. In young master North’s case, the separation is the central conceit of the film — North (Elijah Wood) is the more or less “perfect” child who is nonetheless resolutely ignored, or at least underappreciated, by his self involved parents (a cheeky team up of Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, just in case there are any Seinfeld wondering what it would be like if George had married Elaine). That lack of attention leads North to a legal “emancipation” which in turn sets him off on a court mandated quest to find “new, improved” parents.

The biggest issue North arguably has is that it tries way too hard to establish its intentionally whimsical tone, something that’s evident right off the bat with Bruce Willis’ narration and even more potently with regard to the frenetic and unfunny establishing bit with North and his parental units. By the time Willis shows up as a department store Easter Bunny, in the first of several cameos he does sprinkled throughout the film which establish him as a quasi-Virgil to North’s Dante, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that while the film may be delivering supposed “whimsy”, it’s awfully short in the laughs department.

Once the basic foundational premise is set, North proceeds to offer what are more or less successive vignettes documenting the young boy’s “adventures” trying to find new parents. There’s a decided lack of real humor running through these sequences, though director Rob Reiner invests the scenes with a surplus of manic energy, perhaps to attempt to distract from that very lack of comic abundance. North travels hither and yon, meeting prospective new family members, but there’s really no logic and subsequently no real narrative momentum to the journey.

The first visit is to a huge ranch in Texas, where North “interviews” a new prospective mother and father (Reba McIntire and Dan Ackroyd), who break into a patently silly song and dance routine as they inform North that their desire is to fatten the kid up so that he approaches the size of their deceased son, Buck. This is supposed to be funny? Willis is back in view as a farmhand named Gabby who proffers a magical gift of a coin that’s been made into a veritable donut by a bullet hole, something that will figure into the plot much later in the film.

North then ventures to Hawaii, where a local politico named Ho (Keone Young) and his wife (Lauren Tom) want to adopt North, albeit apparently in order to feature the kid in an advertising campaign to attract visitors to the island, a campaign which is obviously modeled on the iconic old “Coppertone girl” advertisements. Again, this is supposed to be funny? Additionally with regard to this particular sequence, is it even emotionally logical that North would forsake what seems to be paradise simply because a painted version of him displays “where the Good Lord split him”?

Other “site reviews” are similarly uninspired and at times verge on political incorrectness, or at least insensitivity, with depictions of the Amish and (especially) an African tribe almost willfully jaw dropping. That would seem to suggest that perhaps somewhere along the way Reiner thought about making something substantially more provocative, but what’s odd about all of these developments is how “nice” Reiner wants to keep everything. In fact, almost all of the parents surveyed are okay in their own rights (or at least not too objectionable), but it’s part of North’s education process that he finds out that his own parents are pretty much okay in their own right.

North ends up aping the film version of The Wizard of Oz in one way additional to that aforementioned “there’s no place like home”, when a certain conceit about what actually has been going on is revealed. Unfortunately, as much as it tries (and it does try), North never summons up anything approaching the magic that the 1939 classic had. Some kids end up in Oz, but other kids seem to be fated to remain stuck in a cinematic Kansas no matter where they travel to in the actual film.

North Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

North is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is my first experience with Sony / Columbia's so-called "Choice Collection", a series which offers MOD titles, in this case on a BD-R. The source here looks fairly dated, with acceptable but never mind blowing levels of detail, and some prevalent softness throughout the presentation. The palette is at least somewhat variable — at times, it pops rather appealingly (see screenshot 1), but at others it looks pretty anemic and often slightly skewed toward the pink side of things. The grain field is quite fine, but looks generally good, though it can edge toward splotchy yellow territory at times (see screenshot 19). Bitrates are a bit on the low end, typically residing in the high teens or low twenties.

North Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

North's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track sounds fine and offers excellent clarity in the glut of musical elements Marc Shaiman brings to the table (literally, in terms of the Texas banquet scene). The film has a rather enjoyably goofy sound design which is rendered with fine fidelity throughout the presentation. Dialogue also comes through with no problems whatsoever.

North Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements on this disc, and indeed there's not even a Main Menu. The disc boots automatically to some relatively brief interstitial data like the Sony masthead and the unavoidable FBI piracy warning, and then the film starts. At film start, there's a very quick automatic popup offering a chance to access subtitles (the Subtitle access can be gotten to at any point by pressing the Pop Up Menu button).

North Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The more observant among you may have noticed that despite my less than glowing review, I still gave North 2.0 stars and didn't seem to object to things perhaps quite as much as institutions like Siskel and/or Ebert did. The film is kind of a lumbering mess, to be sure, but it has an underlying sweetness that's kind of charming (if, again, way overdone), and the performances by a gigantic cast of comedy experts, while often hammy beyond belief, also are generally fun. The film also has a winning production design, for those who care about such things. This "Choice Collection" offerings presents adequate but never totally impressive looking video, and fine sounding audio.