The 1994 Bruce Willis comedy North earned Roger Ebert’s most savage review, which has become its lasting legacy. Since he always had the Die Hard movies to fall back on, Bruce Willis took a lot of chances during the 1990s. Willis would balance more commercial fare like Striking Distance with riskier projects like Mortal Thoughts or even Pulp Fiction,

Willis was more than willing to do supporting roles or cameos too, such as working alongside his idol Paul Newman in Nobody’s Fool. Not all of his risks paid off, though, and there are plenty of bad Bruce Willis movies from this period. Color of Night is a campy disaster (though it’s fun in its own right) but North could just be his worst.

This Rob Reiner-directed movie stars Elijah Wood as an intelligent young boy who feels so undervalued by his parents that he divorces them. He then sets out on a “hilarious” globetrotting journey to find new parents.

In addition to Willis’ role as a kind of guardian angel, the movie also featured Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander, Dan Aykroyd, Reba McEntire and a young Scarlett Johansson. Despite having the director of Stand by Me and Misery and an amazing ensemble, North is a true mess.

North Became Infamous For Roger Ebert’s Vicious Review

The biggest, most unforgivable sin of the movie is that it’s just not funny. North himself comes off as an unlikable, enтιтled brat, so there is no investment in his self-serving quest to find parents who truly appreciate him. Roger Ebert’s review of North has become infamous too, with the late, great critic taking a flamethrower to it.

Ebert awarded the film zero stars, stating bluntly “North is one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I’ve had at the movies.” It closes out the review by labeling it one of the worst movies ever, and puzzles over how a director as talented as Reiner fumbled the project so thoroughly.

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Ebert’s scorched earth critique of North has essentially become the movie’s legacy. It gets mentioned in every retrospective, and I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie went on to become the тιтle of one of Ebert’s review books.

How North’s Director Responded To Roger Ebert

Before North, it felt like Reiner had some kind of golden touch. He was on a run of acclaimed films like When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men, so North looked like a slam dunk. Instead, it only $12 million on an estimated $40 million budget, and most of the reviews were dire.

In 2000, Rob Reiner was on the receiving end of a NY Friars Club Roast, where he was made to read out Ebert’s charged takedown. It’s a hilarious moment and shows Reiner has a sense of humor about it. However, in a 2014 ScreenCrush interview, Reiner admits to being a little taken aback by Ebert’s review.

Roger Ebert said, ‘I hated this movie!’ Seven times! He said ‘hated’ seven times. And I’m thinking, that’s because Roger Ebert wanted me to do something. He wanted me to do something that I didn’t do for him. So, I wanted to make this little fable – this little kind of quirky fable about a boy whose questioning if he could have different parents. That fantasy that kids have at all times.

For Reiner’s part, he stands by North and had a good time making it. In the aftermath of its bombing, Reiner soon rebounded with the Aaron Sorkin-scripted drama The American President.

North Isn’t The Only Film Roger Ebert Hated

Ebert was a lifelong champion of cinema and inspired an entire generation of fans to think critically about the medium. That said, he could also be delightfully salty when he really disliked something, like North. He generally hated the works of Rob Schneider like Deuce Bigalow or The H๏τ Chick, and said of the 1996 gangster comedy Mad Dog Time.

“Mad Dog Time” is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time.

Ebert declared Armageddon was “… an ᴀssault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained“ and said of The Village’s ending that “… to call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.”

About the only film Ebert hated even more than North was 1980’s Caligula, calling it “… sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.” He also admits to walking out an hour before it finished.

Source: Roger Ebert.com, Box Office Mojo, ScreenCrush