MR. NORTH
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1988 Jeff Meyer
Imagine, if you will, Pollyanna as a man of about 28, graduated from Yale, living life on his own terms, and giving off slight electrical shocks to those around him. Outside of that, it's not much different from the Disney character and film of the same name. Young Mr. North (Anthony Edwards) wanders around very-upper-crust Newport Beach during the twenties, installing confidence or consternation wherever he goes. All the deserving characters (Robert Mitchum, Lauren Bacall, and many, many others) are enriched for his acquaintance; all the rotters (chief among them being David Warner, who hasn't played a sympathetic role since I don't know when) get their comeuppance thanks to him. Angelica Huston apparently learns what "bio-electrically stimulated" means in the last scene, and the history of philosophy is rather stunningly changed. In short, it's a cross between MY BRILLIANT CAREER and a Horatio Alger story.
Which is the major problem of the film. None of these people seem real; they're like figures in a fantasy one might construct where every good fortune that could happen, does. Okay, one exception: Harry Dean Stanton plays a marvelously comic butler, but I honestly don't think Stanton could put in a bad performance if he worked at it. MR. NORTH has a stellar cast (the film was directed by John Huston's son (or grandson, perhaps, I'm not sure -- there are rumors that Huston himself did a good deal of it himself, before he died), and he knew a lot of friends to call in for a project like this), and it is fun to watch, but you begin to forget about it several hours afterwards. While completely unlike it in other respects, it has the same overall effect as DIE HARD: you watch it, are entertained, and then leave untainted by any real fragments of what you've seen.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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