NORTH
A film review by John Walker
Copyright 1994 John Walker
My form of "rating": NORTH kept me chuckling throughout, with a suitable number of guffaws, and a continual presence of neat things to grin at or think about. I just got the sound track and book; now how do I get the tee-shirt and baseball cap?!
In brief: It's *fun*!
NORTH is practically an archetype, a fable, a myth, of an important set of experiences in growing up--when you realize that your parents aren't perfect, and that other families and cultures are sort of strange, and so are you!
Based on the 1984 kid's book of the same name by Alan Zweibel, the film takes an unabashedly kid's-eye view of the world. If you want a traditional category to describe NORTH, it's "whimsy"--utterly fantastic things presented as if they were completely ordinary.
My suspicion is that responses to NORTH will depend on how well people can cope with a whimsical and kiddish perspective, *and* on how they have dealt with the experiences on which the film is based.
(Why anyone would *not* find NORTH *at least* a pleasant diversion is beyond me. I suppose I can "understand" how someone might have a negative reaction, but it's something I can't "experience". When those negative reactions are extreme, I begin to wonder whether something else is afoot--something more than merely a bizarre response to a funny, well-made flick.)
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At eleven years old, North (Elijah Wood) is The Perfect Kid. Bright, athletic, the works. He is popular with the other kids even while their parents hold him up as a rebuke to any failing. ("*North* *flosses*.") But his own parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander) are so wrapped up in themselves and their jobs, they don't even seem to *notice* him, much less appreciate him. His schoolwork is suffering, his Little League performance, everything. He fails at trying to break through their self-absorption. He's got to do something.
Prompted by an idea that comes up during a conversation with a department-store Easter Bunny (Bruce Willis, who also narrates), North begins thinking of becoming a free agent. In short order, his friend Winchell (Mathew McCurley), editor of the school paper, has put him together with Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz), a shyster lawyer. North sues! He wins! But Judge Buckle (Alan Arkin) rules that he has to be in the arms of his new (or old) parents by noon on Labor Day, or it's The Orphanage for him.
It's July. Now, he has to sort through all the candidate parents who are flooding him with first-class tickets to come to them.
While he globe trots, Winchell is making his move. Parents are hysterical with fear. If North can do it, why not *their* kids? Winchell is building a movement out of this--out of the parents' fears, and out of the kids' dawning sense of power. (Will the voting age be lowered to seven?!)
So, we get to see prospective parents from Texas, Hawaii, Alaska, China, Africa, France, and others back in the States.
I don't think it's any spoiler to say that North will have to deal with less than ideal candidates. Even when they *look* ideal, there'll be personal problems, personal quirks, and cultural differences, just for starters. Parallel to that are the implications of North the real kid becoming a Symbol--not a *player* in the Game of Power, but a *prize*, a *precondition*.
Well, how will it end? What are the candidate parents really like? Who among them will be the lucky winners? How will North factor in to Winchell's growing power and lust for world domination?
Hey, it'd be a spoiler to answer any of those questions!
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In NORTH, Wood plays perhaps the only character who might be "real." He has to deal with a wacko universe, and still respond, believably, in a relatively sane way. Wood's essential reality gives a center of gravity to the whole film--in the context of everyone else's lunacy.
Everyone else is either a kid's perspective of what adults are "really" like--or what many (whether kid or adult) would really *like* to be if they had the chance. McCurley's Winchell is, well, a sleaze. A creep with a certain kind of charm and intelligence, Winchell is sneaky, underhanded, treacherous, power hungry, devious, and dangerous, perhaps even a genuine fiend--in other words, I enjoyed McCurley's performance immensely.
Lovitz's attorney Belt is a lot like Winchell--except without things like intelligence and "charm". Therefore he's less dangerous. He's a perfect grown up to be used as a pawn by Winchell.
Willis, besides narrating, shows up on the scene in a number of guises--such as ranch hand, beach bum, stand-up comic. He has a nice, easy-going, off-handed detachment. Removed from everything, he mainly gives North the opportunity to say what's on his mind and to bring his choices out into the open where he can think about them.
Besides those characters, there is an army of cameos. I'll mention some (not all!) names later, but if the names aren't always familiar, the faces are.
Also, as a bonus for adults, there are lots of nifty little points integrated into the film. For instance, for independent research: Where have we seen the house in Texas? What product placement is incredibly blatant--and yet true and to the point!
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From the opening credits, there's a sense that NORTH is *not* gonna be giving us an "ordinary" picture of reality. As the credits roll, the camera takes us around what is apparently North's room. But it looks like a department-store window display of the perfect room--packed with toys, trains, and what-not, in an impossibly tidy arrangement that no one could really walk through without disturbing something.
The room doesn't figure in the story, but if it's any consolation, its surreality is relatively realistic compared to the rest of the film. What NORTH gives us will be painted with a very broad brush. Remember, it's based on a kid's book, a very whimsical one. (Think about the names of most the characters for a while.) And the original author, Zweibel, joined with Andrew Scheinman in writing the screenplay, and was co-producer, along with director Rob Reiner.
I just picked up a copy of the book, and while I haven't had time to more than glance at it, both book and movie seem to give us similar ideas.
Well, what *are* those ideas?
I'm sort of surprised that I haven't seen more comments about cultural stereotypes in NORTH. North's parents fall into a "suburban Jewish" role; Ma and Pa Tex (Reba McIntire and Dan Ackroyd) are into *Big*ness; the Alaskans (Kathy Bates, Graham Green, and grandpa, Abe Vigoda) live in an electric-operated *igloo*! (And in summer, the day is six months long!)
But more to the point is the personal baggage that at least *some* of the parents carry. Without, I hope, doing spoilers, we get a clear drawing of things lots of kids have to live with in their parents: North's own parents are wrapped up in their work, some of the candidates act from insecurities, or want to lay a trip on their Perfect Kid. Others are just from different planets, culturally.
Does any of this sound familiar? Weird customs? Screwed-up grown-ups?
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but it certainly sounds familiar to *me*.
Maybe the burbs insulate some people from cultural differences, but that wasn't the case in small-town Rhode Island, with lots of nationalities clearly visible. And in my own family, we had Scotch Calvinists and Southern-Irish Protestants as well as Catholics to deal with.
Yeah, other nationalities do things that are weird, don't they? But don't *we* look a bit weird to them, too? And doesn't the same thing happen with people in different classes? I can remember my parents discussing or explaining to me how they dealt with people from different worlds.
So, also, I came to realize that those around me, including my parents, were a bit messed up--quite independent of class or culture. Fears, limitations, quirks, they were all there. And if I mentioned them, my parents' response was sort of "Well, of course!" That's just part of life, isn't it? Isn't *everyone* a little messed up? And sometime or another, I came to see that even *I* was part of that!
NORTH gives us all those ways in which we're different, and weird, and messed up--writ large and presented as fun.
And that, I think, is how someone could hate NORTH.
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On one level, NORTH gives us a world that is plainly ridiculous. Its connection with "reality" is downright adversarial. (I mean, if NORTH is any indication, then there have been some *major* changes in the situation in China since I last saw the news on the tube!)
The rampant whimsy alone will be enough to bother some people. But underneath the whimsy, is a view of life that can be seen as radically dark, as unspeakably bleak. It takes no effort to see that NORTH recognizes serious questions of social order, death, and alienation. Also, think of the things we wanted as kids--and want as grown-ups: attention, wealth, influence, a wonderful place to live. North finds that they can come with a high emotional price tag.
And in facing some really nice people, North has to admit that his *own* limitations prevent him from accepting them as his parents.
You seem like *very* nice folks, but to be totally honest
with you, if I lived here, I sure wouldn't get much homework
done.
On one level, the message is stark: You're *alone*. If you can understand adults, you won't be able to rely on them. And if you can rely on them, you won't be able to understand them. In the rare case where you can both understand and rely on them, they'll still be alien somehow. And whether or not they're messed up, you've certainly got problems yourself.
Cheerful little message for kids, isn't it? Yet it describes facts of life we all have to deal with. So what are we supposed to do with that?
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Do you believe in the generations thing?
Think of how the stereotypical Silent Generation, Boomer, and X/Thirteener "ought" to respond when they find out that their parents and other grown ups are messed up and there's lots of weird customs in the world.
The Silent Generation would try be Responsible Social Units, and work to make everything tidy. Or at least work to keep busy and make money.
Boomers would denounce all "stereotypes" as vicious lies and deny the facts. Alternatively, they'd go either blaming or self-condemning or both; then they'd do therapy about it.
Xers would whine about it and say it showed how rotten everything was and showed why *their* lives were "dysfunctional"--a word the Silents and Boomers gave them.
True, those descriptions are strictly cartoons and cardboard. But they all agree that the weirdness and the dysfunctions are *very* big deals indeed, and must be treated as such.
Supposedly, however, there's a *fourth* generational type--the same type as World War II's GI generation--the generation that got dropped through a meat grinder. The ones who survived came out to produce the prosperity the the Silents matured in and Boomers grew up in. This is the generational type that will allegedly characterize kids of Elijah Wood's age. How would the cardboard GI generation respond?
I suggest they'd say, golly, that's too bad! But ya can't let little stuff like that get ya down! C'mon! We got a movie t'make! (Break into big musical number of the sort they grew up on.)
Less cardboardly and cartoonishly, they'd agree to the facts but not do any big angst trip on them. They'd try to deal with the dysfunctions. They'd probably *like* a lot of the simple weirdness, and make movies that skewered every group possible.
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Stereotypes aside, of the four responses, which seems to make the most sense? And which does NORTH come closest to? And how do you think some people are going to deal with NORTH when they really come from a different planet?
Let's face it, NORTH might well be patently offensive to some people for the very reasons others find it entertaining. How did *you* deal with waking up to the facts that *everyone* is messed up to some extent? If someone else's dysfunction was really major, was that cause for self-doubt? Or cause to feel sorrow for the person?
And how did you deal with recognizing that some folks are just *different*? Was it a big deal? Or was it just life? Was it maybe even sort of neat?
I think I know how North the kid would answer those questions. And I'm afraid I suspect how some of the critics of NORTH the movie would answer them.
And I think I know how I'd answer the critics:
VIVA EL NORTE! VIVA EL NORTE! VIVA EL NORTE!
John Walker walkerj@access.digex.net
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