I agree with the late Roger Ebert, as you can see in my title. It was a movie with the most flawed, stupid, and heartless plot, and was made in a pathetic attempt to be funny, which it sure as hell wasn't. Happily ditching your parents without the slightest bit of emotion, because of, what we saw, the father spends a few minutes expressing to North's mother about his stupid pants factory job. The "pants factory" he worked in itself was supposed to be some kind of joke, each "worker" there was dressed in some stupid costume dancing or acting without any reason or punchline. That was not a pants factory, nobody was seen actually making or manufacturing pants. It was just a joke that was stupid and didn't make sense. That was only the tip of this awful iceburg which many of us wish would've melted. There were so many other horrible things about this movie.
I don't have room here to write all of the terrible things about this 90 minute monstrosity, but here are some of them: 11 year old North (Elijha Wood) fakes a heart attack after his dad's (Jason Alexander) pants talk and mentioning blood in his stool, and his parents both immediately jump to his rescue showing genuine concern. BUT, North still immediately divorces himself from his parents without a care about their reaction, and with almost the whole freakin world not only understanding towards North about it, but with looking at North as some kind of international hero! Basically, North was a kid who got good grades, played baseball, acted in a school play, but he wasn't some superhero. He deserted his parents for (gasp!) spending a few moments talking to each other instead of talking just to him and ignoring each other every minute of the day like he apparently expected them to do! And that is what made him an international legend above all other kids around the world!? Nevermind the kids in the world with parents who abuse, hit, beat up, molest, or really ignore or abondon their kids. In this movie, what North's parents did was seen as a worse thing for parents to do than any of those other things! And to add insult to severe injury, North was a total hypocrite because he complained about his parents being selfish, but he then made the most extreme selfish move just to suit his selfish and also irrational wishes (and the bratty spoiled way he said "I'm not common!" to Easter Bunny Bruce Willis).
There are still many more horrible things in this movie, North's parents freeze into some comatose state, stay that way through court, and for like another two months and are put on display like that! Jon Lovitz has an annoying performance first as North's lawyer, then as the lacky of 11 year old genuis Winchell who first assists North and then him and Lovitz team up to make sure North will never go back to his parents, and to build a global empire with the works including fancy office, limo driver, and hit man who tries to shoot North!
There are still many more terrible things in this movie, since I still haven't even began to discribe North's experiences searching for "better" parents. The Texans, Hawaiins, and Alaskan scenes are nothing but annoying unfunny jokes and puns. And, each of those scenes have parents try to do things much worse than his real parents ever did. The Texans insist on making North obese to replace their other deceased obese son. The Alaskans make the grandfather of the family flow out to sea to die (and with the parents being totally unemotional about it and saying "it's for the best before he starts embarrassing himself"). And the worst of all, the Hawaiians insisting on displaying a perverse photo of North on billboards. And the parents say it's to raise their self esteem! What!!? And there's still more horrible stuff, Jerry Lewis on every channel in Paris, North to become the emperor of China!? And North staring fascinatingly at his potential mother/topless African tribal woman!? Then we got two pathetic 50s sitcom rip-offs in the movie (I like 50s sitcoms mind you, I just didn't like the stupid ways they was referenced here). First the Alaskan parents out of nowhere whistling the Andy Griffin theme tune, and then the cardboard reference of the Beavers in the Nelson residence that North seeks potential parents from.
There is still more bad stuff in this movie, down to geographical ignorance. There is no snow and ice on the ground between Jueno and Anchorage, Alaska in July, or a long airplane runway connecting the two cities because airplanes in Alaska don't skid upon landing for 2 hours. But never mind, it was just another of the many many many failed jokes in this movie.
Then, SPOILER, we have the cop-out ending of almost everything in the movie being a dream, from him earlier on falling asleep in that chair to waking up about 4 minutes before the credits. I did question if the Winchell character was in North's real world as another kid at his school, but it seemed he only appeared in his dream and was nowhere to be seen in any of the school scenes before North fell asleep. Well, it doesn't really matter, because this movie was just too awful to save in any way.
There's still more awful things about this movie, but I've definitely listed enough of them now to give most people very very good reason not to waste another hour and a half of their lives witnessing something so upsetting and painful.
I don't have room here to write all of the terrible things about this 90 minute monstrosity, but here are some of them: 11 year old North (Elijha Wood) fakes a heart attack after his dad's (Jason Alexander) pants talk and mentioning blood in his stool, and his parents both immediately jump to his rescue showing genuine concern. BUT, North still immediately divorces himself from his parents without a care about their reaction, and with almost the whole freakin world not only understanding towards North about it, but with looking at North as some kind of international hero! Basically, North was a kid who got good grades, played baseball, acted in a school play, but he wasn't some superhero. He deserted his parents for (gasp!) spending a few moments talking to each other instead of talking just to him and ignoring each other every minute of the day like he apparently expected them to do! And that is what made him an international legend above all other kids around the world!? Nevermind the kids in the world with parents who abuse, hit, beat up, molest, or really ignore or abondon their kids. In this movie, what North's parents did was seen as a worse thing for parents to do than any of those other things! And to add insult to severe injury, North was a total hypocrite because he complained about his parents being selfish, but he then made the most extreme selfish move just to suit his selfish and also irrational wishes (and the bratty spoiled way he said "I'm not common!" to Easter Bunny Bruce Willis).
There are still many more horrible things in this movie, North's parents freeze into some comatose state, stay that way through court, and for like another two months and are put on display like that! Jon Lovitz has an annoying performance first as North's lawyer, then as the lacky of 11 year old genuis Winchell who first assists North and then him and Lovitz team up to make sure North will never go back to his parents, and to build a global empire with the works including fancy office, limo driver, and hit man who tries to shoot North!
There are still many more terrible things in this movie, since I still haven't even began to discribe North's experiences searching for "better" parents. The Texans, Hawaiins, and Alaskan scenes are nothing but annoying unfunny jokes and puns. And, each of those scenes have parents try to do things much worse than his real parents ever did. The Texans insist on making North obese to replace their other deceased obese son. The Alaskans make the grandfather of the family flow out to sea to die (and with the parents being totally unemotional about it and saying "it's for the best before he starts embarrassing himself"). And the worst of all, the Hawaiians insisting on displaying a perverse photo of North on billboards. And the parents say it's to raise their self esteem! What!!? And there's still more horrible stuff, Jerry Lewis on every channel in Paris, North to become the emperor of China!? And North staring fascinatingly at his potential mother/topless African tribal woman!? Then we got two pathetic 50s sitcom rip-offs in the movie (I like 50s sitcoms mind you, I just didn't like the stupid ways they was referenced here). First the Alaskan parents out of nowhere whistling the Andy Griffin theme tune, and then the cardboard reference of the Beavers in the Nelson residence that North seeks potential parents from.
There is still more bad stuff in this movie, down to geographical ignorance. There is no snow and ice on the ground between Jueno and Anchorage, Alaska in July, or a long airplane runway connecting the two cities because airplanes in Alaska don't skid upon landing for 2 hours. But never mind, it was just another of the many many many failed jokes in this movie.
Then, SPOILER, we have the cop-out ending of almost everything in the movie being a dream, from him earlier on falling asleep in that chair to waking up about 4 minutes before the credits. I did question if the Winchell character was in North's real world as another kid at his school, but it seemed he only appeared in his dream and was nowhere to be seen in any of the school scenes before North fell asleep. Well, it doesn't really matter, because this movie was just too awful to save in any way.
There's still more awful things about this movie, but I've definitely listed enough of them now to give most people very very good reason not to waste another hour and a half of their lives witnessing something so upsetting and painful.