#70b North (Wes)

North

Movie number two of our second round of reserve movies and this time it’s a film that I’ve only ever seen photos from, and know nothing about the plot, North. I remember this coming out and feeling faintly embarrassed for Bruce Willis as the photo’s I saw were of him in a giant pink Easter Bunny suit. This is the man who played John McClane in Die Hard, which has to be the best action movie ever, and now he was wearing a giant pink bunny costume. Could this movie be as embarrassing as I imagined? Let’s find out.

Directed by Rob Reiner, North is about a boy who shares the same name as the title. After being constantly ignored by his constantly arguing parents, North (Elijah Wood) meets a man who claims to be the Easter Bunny (Bruce Willis), who try’s to make North make up things with his parents. His friend Winchell (Matthew McCurly) suggests a different strategy though, that of divorcing his parents. After this divorce is granted by a judge North is told that he has one summer to find new parents or end up in an orphanage. So North travels the world trying out new parents, all of whom shock or embarrass him in some way. Each time he is advised to seek a different life by someone who looks suspiciously like the Easter Bunny, but never admits to being the same person. Eventually North decides to reunite with his parents and has to fight his way back home whilst avoiding a hitman that Winchell has sent after him. Luckily it was all a dream and I didn’t watch this crappy movie. Or did I? (I did, it saddens me to admit it).

So just to re-iterate what I’ve said twice now. Bruce Willis is in this movie dressed in a giant pink Easter Bunny costume. Think about that for a moment. A giant pink Easter Bunny costume. I honestly can’t think of a reason that would make me want to watch a film less (unless it was made by Uwe Boll or starred Paris Hilton maybe). I could rant on about the acting, or the story, or the script and I would have good reason to, but the fact that this movie stars Bruce Willis in a giant pink Easter Bunny costume just kills it for me. I can’t think of a single thing that I could say that could trump that fact. Bruce Willis. Wears. A. Giant. Pink. Easter. Bunny. Costume. This was released the same year as Pulp Fiction, and a year before Die Hard With a Vengeance and Twelve Monkeys, so Bruce obviously was being offered good roles, so why would he take this? I have no problem with people wearing ridiculous things (in real-life or in movies), I love it when actors can laugh at themselves and be silly (like Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone and Whoopi Goldberg did in An Alan Smithee Movie), I think that it’s a little bit tragic when they can’t as they just look pompous, but there has to be a line somewhere. I think that line was Bruce Willis in a giant pink Easter Bunny costume.

Sometimes watching movies on this list makes me happy, sometimes they make me angry, quite often they bore the living crap out of me, but this movie had Bruce Willis in a giant pink Easter Bunny costume and that just upsets me. Please avoid if you want to enjoy Die Hard or Sin City again. I just fear that whenever I watch those now I’ll just get flashbacks of his giant pink Easter Bunny costume, and that makes me sad.