Notorious for Roger Ebert's most derisive review or the most derisive review in the history of reviews. After having seen it for the second time in 10 years, I must agree that I was not as amused as I was the first time.
North is a major cheat. In the first half hour it comes up with a pretty nifty premise but then it doesn't have the guts to follow through. It has nothing to do with most of the characters being broad caricatures or the fact that most of them are kind of stupid. (Will there ever be a part for Jon Lovitz where he is not a sniveling toady?) Most of the characters may not be funny, true, but the thing is that after years of seeing parodies like Airplane or Naked Gun, you sort of become very jaded and seeing the little kid, Winchell play dictator isn't as funny as it must have been if the movie came out in the 50's.
North is a pretty bad movie one of the reasons comes at the end. It's as if the writer got stuck for an ending and then decided to give up. Watch it and you will know what I'm talking about.
Another reason it's bad is because of Bruce Willis. I don't mean because his performance is awful but because he is tremendously not funny, something that is hard to say about him. Hudson Hawk looks like an Oscar caliber performance compared to this. He is flat (probably written that way) but it is his "funny" costumes that's supposed to carry his comedic weight. At that it bombs.
So I hated this movie too, I guess, but it is not the worst movie in history. Elijah Wood is pretty good and individual episodes are quite amusing (Dan Aykroyd as a Texan). It's just that ending I can't stomach.
North is a major cheat. In the first half hour it comes up with a pretty nifty premise but then it doesn't have the guts to follow through. It has nothing to do with most of the characters being broad caricatures or the fact that most of them are kind of stupid. (Will there ever be a part for Jon Lovitz where he is not a sniveling toady?) Most of the characters may not be funny, true, but the thing is that after years of seeing parodies like Airplane or Naked Gun, you sort of become very jaded and seeing the little kid, Winchell play dictator isn't as funny as it must have been if the movie came out in the 50's.
North is a pretty bad movie one of the reasons comes at the end. It's as if the writer got stuck for an ending and then decided to give up. Watch it and you will know what I'm talking about.
Another reason it's bad is because of Bruce Willis. I don't mean because his performance is awful but because he is tremendously not funny, something that is hard to say about him. Hudson Hawk looks like an Oscar caliber performance compared to this. He is flat (probably written that way) but it is his "funny" costumes that's supposed to carry his comedic weight. At that it bombs.
So I hated this movie too, I guess, but it is not the worst movie in history. Elijah Wood is pretty good and individual episodes are quite amusing (Dan Aykroyd as a Texan). It's just that ending I can't stomach.