The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Though Peter Jackson shot the three Lord of the Rings films simultaneously, the technical progress from Fellowship to The Two Towers is immediately evident: the CGI is more detailed even as it expands to absurd dimensions, Jackson's more direct camerawork no longer clashes so garishly with the poetry of the location shooting and set design, which looks even better than it did in the previous film. Indeed, for better or worse, the massive expansion of scope in The Two Towers paved the way for the swords and sandals epic that became a brief fad in the middle of the decade after Gladiator set up the foundation. (The genre eventually fizzled out after most of its entries lost money, with audiences just smart enough to realize they were paying money simply to see LOTR again; still, while we had to suffer mediocrities like Kingdom of Heaven, we also got some fantastic works like... the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven).

The enlarged scope of the action, however, almost entirely eliminates the personal feel of its predecessor. Bifurcated into separate plots involving Sam and Frodo's suicide mission to Mordor and the remaining Fellowship members' fight against corrupt wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee), the story must leap great distances to follow its characters. Indeed, compared to the endless close-ups of Fellowship, Two Towers tends to track movement through extreme long shots in bird's-eye views, dwarfing characters against the beautiful New Zealand, and where I complained last time that Jackson kept cutting to close-ups when I wanted to see more of the world around the characters, these long shots often prevent an emotional connection with the characters. If it seems at this point that I simply cannot be pleased, know that I am wondering that myself.

Yet one must acknowledge that, compared to the first film, Two Towers zips along with vigor: Fellowship spent a notable chunk of time (particularly in the extended cut) simply roaming the idyllic Shire, giving some time to characters who have no impact on the rest of the story. Following an eight-minute montage of Middle-Earth's past and the history of the One Ring, Jackson never cut away from the Shire until the 32-minute mark and only moved away to other locations once or twice for the rest of the first hour. Within the first 32 minutes of The Two Towers: we see a longer version of the fight between Gandalf and the Balrog that continues after he falls; Frodo and Sam making their way to Mordor, meeting, capturing and "taming" Sméagol/Gollum (Andy Serkis); Saruman's Uruk-hai and Orcs march captured Hobbits Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan) until the reach the edges of Fangorn forest and the two factions begin killing each other before Men arrive to slay the stragglers; another contingent of evil creatures terrorizes and burns the homes of the people of Rohan; Saruman converts his home, Isengard, from a lush garden into an industrial nightmare to breed (literally) an army; Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn chase after the Uruk-hai who captured Merry and Pippin; Théoden, King of Rohan, is so poisoned by the spell of Saruman that he banishes his brave and loyal nephew Éomer and does not even acknowledge the death of his own son; then, finally, the three Fellowship members chasing the Uruk-hai stumble upon Éomer and other banished soldiers.

Phew. To Jackson's credit, he never flags when jumping across different perspectives and huge physical distances, but here he's missed the point that he understood with Fellowship: The Lord of the Rings isn't about the plot -- which is ultimately no more complicated than a journey from point A to B -- but the finely detailed minutiae that turned the simple act of a long-as-hell hike into one of the great works of 20th century literature. Jackson barrels ahead in such an action-oriented mindset that character and atmosphere falls to the wayside:Legolas and Gimli become nothing more than comic relief, more so even than Merry and Pippin: Tolkien wrote the characters to comment upon intolerance and xenophobia, but they bond here only through light insults and fascistic displays of murderous violence (this existed in the book, but it was never a true competition between the two). Compare their tedious boasting to the bit in the extended cut of Fellowship in which Gimli is so overwhelmed by Lady Galadriel's beauty that he can ask her for nothing but a single hair from her head, and the deference he feels for Elves afterward. Éowyn (Miranda Otto) and Éomer have nothing to except pine for Aragorn and be surly, respectively.

The most troubling development is the massive rewrite of Faramir's story: in the book, Faramir (David Wenham) and his Gondorian Rangers stumble across Frodo, Sam and Sméagol, he questions Frodo and Sam about the Ring and his slain brother Boromir and then releases them, aware of the danger of the Ring and unwilling to risk its corruption to wield its power. Jackson and co. completely rewrote the character into someone scarcely different from his brother: "Filmamir" manhandles the Hobbits and tacitly condones the beating of Gollum, even choking the creature twice in rapid succession in their last moments together. Faramir does not release the Hobbits at first but drags them to the besieged city of Osgiliath, sure that the Ring will somehow help Gondor's fortunes. By the time he does display the nobility and wisdom that separated him from his brother, it's impossible to distinguish between the two. A flashback (deleted in the theatrical cut but available in the longer edition) helps explain the Faramir's motives for attempting to seize the Ring, but it's simply not enough justification. Jackson added such a massive deviation because he moved the book's climax to the third film (rightly so, to correspond with the actual chronology of events), but he ruins a great character in the process, undercutting Faramir's moral fortitude to stress the necessity of Aragorn's return to the throne. Jackson would have served himself better by simply making the more epic Helm's Deep sequence the full climax and using the time allotted by cutting this stuff out by fleshing out the world to the degree he did in Fellowship.

Of course, when Jackson deigns to let us wander a bit, Two Towers has the same epic poetry that its predecessor contained in greater abundance: Rohan is a nondescript, wide-open plain -- the Kansas of Middle Earth -- but Helm's Deep is a masterpiece of miniature construction. A stone behemoth carved from the mountain it's connected to, Helm's Deep promises a hell of a fight before anything happens; for my money, the battle sequence that takes place here trumps the larger one in Return of the King. It lacks some of the dodgy CGI of the later sequence, and it's epic without brushing up against the border of absurdity (oh, that Oliphaunt riding thing continues to grate, doesn't it?). For that matter, Isengard is also a terrific creation, nicely juxtaposing the furnaces of industrialism with the hellfire of Mordor. The real treat of the film, though, is simply following Sam and Frodo on their quest to Mordor: the Dead Marshes, Emyn Muil, the Black Gate of Mordor. All of them look fantastic and suitably unsettling and unwelcoming, offering the only true ambiance of the film.

And, behold, great character development exists, in the form of a completely animated character. Looking back, if Two Towers' animated battle sequences paved the way for mass epics, then Gollum revealed that heavy animation in live-action films could carry emotional weight. He's a masterpiece, owing both to the incredible work by Weta Digital (only occasionally can you spot moments where the technology used on him has dated) and the exceptional, award-worthy performance by Andy Serkis. He captures the character(s) perfectly, imbuing the split personalities of Sméagol and Gollum with such depth and distinctive originality that one can always tell "who" is speaking at any moment -- to find a similarly bravura performance, one would have to turn to Nicolas Cage's performance as the twin Kaufman brothers in Adaptation. He could have been nothing more than a set piece, a bit of technology to be ogled at but never explored (like, say, the magnificently rendered creatures of Avatar), but Serkis and the writers give him pathos and empathetic qualities. Nothing else in the rest of the trilogy is as brilliant as the shot/reverse shot conversation between Sméagol and himself: initially funny, it morphs into a heartbreaking portrait of a wretched creature tortured by a curse that destroyed far stronger people.

So, for all of The Two Towers' flaws, it's still incredibly entertaining, indeed probably the most viscerally and immediately enjoyable of the three. For that reason, it has its ardent defenders, but I can't help but view it as the odd one out; the pendulum simply swung too far from "overly intimate" to "epic but impersonal." Furthermore, where the additions in the extended cut of Fellowship let us languish a bit more in this beautiful world, the deleted scenes of Two Towers interrupt its narrative momentum, breaking up its breezy pace with moments of limp comic relief -- yes, I suppose that Éowyn's lack of cooking skills reflects upon her predisposition to fighting and not "woman's work," but the way this is used to signify her masculine outlook on life is just sexist. Besides, they don't make a convincing case for her warrior spirit (save for a few tough-talking lines here and there) when she spends nearly all of her screen time staring atAragorn with longing eyes. Yet even if The Two Towers is the only one of the trilogy to be hampered by its additional scenes, it has enough breathtaking action scenes and moments of quieter beauty to make the task of sitting through its hefty length an easy one.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

[Over the last few months I've been reviewing some of the more noteworthy releases of the decade in preparation for a best of the decade list. In some cases, I've been watching films for the first time and gauging them against established favorites, and for those older films I'm revisiting them to see how I still feel about them and whether they would indeed remain on any list of the films that most affected me. As The Lord of the Rings trilogy had a great deal of impact on my formative years, so, as I have never known the touch of a woman nor gone outside since we built that bomb shelter for Y2K, I have decided to run through the extended versions of the trilogy to decide if one or all of them still catch my fancy. Be excited.]

In 1995, Peter Jackson, Kiwi horror/comedy maestro, approached American studios with the idea of adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, wondering why no one else seemed to care about the beloved fantasy epic. It was a fair point: at the time, Tolkien's work had only found its way on-screen with a generally well-received 1978 cartoon and a Rankin-Bass version of Return of the King that featured, among other things, singing goblins (oy). That Jackson ultimately secured the keys to what would seem a sure-fire hit only demonstrates how little the studios cared about Middle-Earth and its inhabitants: at the time, Jackson's only critical hit was the coming-of-age thriller Heavenly Creatures, a lovely film that introduced the world to Kate Winslet but hardly gave the impression that the creator of Braindead and The Frighteners was ready for his shot at the big time. Miramax decided to give him a two-picture deal to tell the story of the three books, and was later urged to cut it down into one. Understandably upset, Jackson took his two scripts and some test footage around town until he got to New Line Cinema CEO Robert Shaye, who, in one of life's little moments, asked why they were making two films when there were three books.

Therefore, The Lord of the Rings has "labor of love" etched in every frame, its synchronous production of all three chapters bewildering in its innovation and the work ethic it required. You can see it when the prologue, depicting and swiftly summarizing the the history of Middle-Earth and the One Ring, gives way to the lush shots of the Shire, enhanced by the extended version with Bilbo's (the always entertaining Ian Holm) loving voiceover describing this quaint little community for little people, all of whom have big feet and big stomachs and green thumbs. Jackson moves his camera through this hilly, mole-like suburb with a wistfulness befitting a Cameron Crowe film. Looking back, Jackson so marvelously and lovingly captures the Shire that it's actually a comedown when Gandalf (Ian McKellen, who spends all of his time in this idyllic location chewing the scenery to test if he's actually there or on a set) rides into town and starts setting off fireworks like a jackass.

I wonder if there is any point in plot summary, even as the basis of further analysis and not as a means to its own end: the books are the highest selling work of fiction of all time, and the films made a cubic ass-ton of cash, so why waste everyone's time with a recap? There's a Ring, it's bad, time to go on a hike to a volcano. Boom. What makes Fellowship, compared to its grander sequels, interesting is not its plot but its impressive evocation of another world. With on-location shooting around New Zealand, Fellowship naturally anchors itself in reality, but Jackson and his design team craft beautiful sets that fit in so perfectly with the landscapes one might easily assume them to be genuine relics, and that all the behind-the-scenes features revealing them to be nothing more than foam and plastic are filthy lies.

The primary joy of the extended edition of the film, happily treated with severity by Jackson and not as a simple DVD gimmick with sloppily reinserted deleted scenes, is that the added footage allows us to roam this world a bit longer, through foggy, grimy marshes and impossibly green and inviting meadows and craggy, treacherous mountains. It also abets (though not entirely) one of the major problems of the film, indeed the entire franchise: a loose grasp on temporal relations. Many complained about the films' lengths, but Jackson powers through The Lord of the Rings. When Gandalf returns to the Shire to warn Frodo (Elijah Wood) of the impending danger of the Ringwraiths, what in the book was the passage of decades is presented as maybe a week or two, a month tops. The longer cut allows us to see Aragorn leading the Hobbits from Bree to Weathertop, and the simple addition of a single scene adds so much more entertainment value because we're stopping occasionally so see the sights instead of being stuck on the Middle Earth bus tour that was the theatrical version.

Not until the characters reach Rivendell and the larger arc of the trilogy is forged does the story mesh with the visual splendor in an entertaining way. Compared to the fractured perspectives of the sequels, Fellowship plays as an ensemble piece, allowing us to spend yet more time with the backgrounds before the sequels personalized the story. A number of the actors, chiefly those playing the Hobbits and Orlando Bloom, don't have full grasps on their characters yet, but working within a group dynamic allows them to soften their weaknesses, and even McKellen dampens his OTT theatrics and turns Gandalf into an interesting team player instead of a demigod who cannot relate or be related to any of the other characters -- this might explain why the character so rarely used his supposedly powerful magic over the course of the three films.

In retrospect, it's easy to see that Jackson was out of his element with the scope required for the story. His direction in the battle sequences is overwhelming and viscerally disjointed (at least in this installment, which lacks the epic action pieces of its successors), but occasionally he carries that frantic style into the calmer moments, haphazardly editing from one action to another that is linked to the previous one but entirely separate from the last scene, traveling impossible distance for what is meant to be a quick cut. When Frodo announces among the squabbling Elves, Dwarves and Men that he will take the Ring to Mordor, he can barely be heard over the din, yet Jackson immediately cuts to a close-up of Gandalf wearily closing his eyes with regret and turning as the crowd silences to face his wee chum. The wizard was shouting alongside the rest a split-second earlier, and for him to immediately become calm and somber is such a jarring example of bad editing that it continues to baffle me each time I visit these films. That brings us nicely to another problem: the endless close-ups. Jackson must have spent his free time in pre-production vegging with Eisenstein's filmography because he adds so many emotional counterpoints of close-up reactions to nearly every action that I expected an open political message to pour out of these characters' mouths.

He overcomes these shortcomings, however, out of sheer enthusiasm. He has a steady grasp of Tolkien's themes -- environmental concerns, distrust and xenophobia, the typical battle between good and evil -- and he's smart enough to recognize that, when shooting in a country like New Zealand, one need not ignore the scenery. Furthermore, some of his visual choices, such as the distorted haze that blurs the screen when Frodo wears the Ring, are wonderful touches. He also perfectly captures the inexplicable lure of the Ring, though I find it somewhat amusing to watch the film now and find a certain link between the Ring's, a suggestive object (especially when pierced with a finger), maddening effect on people and the equally hysterical reactions that the sexual metaphor of Twilight extracts from its characters*. As for the design, well, do I really need to explain the magnificent costume and makeup? The Orcs and Uruk-hai look absolutely perfect, all oily skin and twisted visages and gnarly teeth. The Elves, illuminated with an aura and donned in light clothing, resemble angels and inspire a serene calm even when engaged in battle. The only one who doesn't look the part, hilariously enough, is Orlando Bloom. My only complaint regarding the costumes is that the outfits look too pristine here, too clean despite the rough journey through various terrains, but that would fortunately change later.

When I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001, I was 12 years old, unconcerned with technique or acting and caring only for that most dubious of adaptive goals: faithfulness. I had read the books for the first time in anticipation of the release and loved them, and like the fool that I was I just wanted this Peter Jackson fellow to put all of the novel's good stuff in the movie. And while I loved the film, I bemoaned the lack of Tom Bombadil , a character I didn't even fully understand, all the while missing how Jackson and his writing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens made much subtler changes to the main characters that proved vastly more important and distinctive. He, Walsh and Boyens give a reasonable motive to Boromir where his character originally received a rounded appraisal only in the final volume, while Sam (Sean Astin) is slowly reshaped into a model of loyalty and Platonic love, a change that would become evident over the next two films. Of greatest interest is Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen ), altered from a consummate hero into a sort of Christ figure (or more so, at least), technically human but something else entirely, filled with self-doubt but ultimately committed to his destiny. The only unwelcome change involves the simplification of Gimli (Jonathan Rhys-Davies) and Legolas , who scarcely have anything to do save lob semi-racist digs at each other, insofar as insulting fictional species constitutes "racism."

So, while my enjoyment of the film has been tempered by the realization of its shortcomings, to say nothing of some dated special effects -- I wouldn't call them weak, but it's easy to discern the real actors from the CG models even in the waves of clashing armies, and green-screen backgrounds are identifiable from natural backdrops -- it's also been enhanced by how much more I appreciate the beauty and passion of the project. Jackson establishes a dialectic with this film, between personal, emotionally identifiable intimacy and epic storytelling, that would define the franchise. Fellowship, as the first of the franchise and thus the one that must introduce and establish the characters, swings more to the "personal" side of the balance, its endless close-ups stressing the importance of the group even as I try to crane around their big heads to see all the pretty stuff behind them. Howard Shore understands Fellowship's more subdued focus, and his excellent score, while properly boisterous and swelling at times, is often reserved and trusts the visuals to impart the film's beauty without imposing an overbearing score. So, while the film's lost some of its luster, I have to admit that I still find it a glorious, all-encompassing fantasy world that remains ever so inviting and enjoyable; here is a film that makes me care even about locations we do not see, places with long-winded titles that crumbled long ago and took some piece of this expertly defined world with them forever.



*Forgive me for comparing The Lord of the Rings to Twilight.

North

I remember a commercial from some old VHS from a kid's movie that advertised a movie called North. It gave away no real specifics, only showing a lad leaving his house and embarking on some sort of journey. All of this was easily conveyed through the visuals, but there was also an announcer who reminded me that this boy, named North, was leaving home and yes, going on a journey. I was always curious about the film, but my undeveloped child brain only processed, "North? That's a dumb name for a person to have." For once, curiosity never got the better of me, but I never forgot that oddball little trailer, perhaps the first one I ever saw that didn't tell me what I really needed to know about the movie.

Then, about a year and a half ago, I saw the name again. Already a film nut by that time, I was always looking for something else to sink my teeth into. One day I was idly sifting through old Siskel and Ebert reviews, and I stumbled across the one for North. Recalling that damn trailer I for some reason never purged from my memory, I thought, "Why not?" Here's what I saw:



Jesus Christ. I'd seen these two tag-team to take down some crap before, but never with this kind of bile. They didn't even look like they were having fun slamming it -- if you slapped some blue paint on their faces, they could have been extras in Braveheart. Naturally, this outpouring of white-hot loathing led me to Ebert's review (why Gene Siskel's reviews have not been archived and released online is a mystery and a tragedy, especially to us younger cinephiles), and it's even better. After tearing into it for the entire review, he ends with this now-immortal passage: "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."

And this is Roger Ebert we're talking about. Not Anthony Lane, not Ray Carney. Roger Ebert. I want to say "And this is the guy who named Crash as the finest film of the year!" but I fear it would be taken the wrong way; I do not mean to play that tired game of "How could he give this a positive/negative review he panned/praised Movie Y!" Rather, it proves Ebert's outlook on film: he is, in his own inimitable-yet-influential way, the biggest fan of film currently working as a critic. He's the man who will find something to praise in even the blandest of movies, to the point that he sometimes even gives them positive write-ups. As much as the more snobbish of filmgoers might regard his penchant for handing out too many three- and four-star reviews (as if it makes perfect sense to allot a set number of positive reviews one will give for the year), he's the Everyman of critics who just so happens to know so much about writing that he never hits you over the head with his talent.

Ebert gave the film zero stars. Let's stop for a moment and consider this, and to see what other films he's awarded with that rareüber-pan. Three films which come to mind immediately are Caligula, Chaos and I Spit on Your Grave. That means that Roger Ebert, being of sound mind and body, placed North, a children's fantasy film, on roughly the same level as three films that all feature graphic and exploitative rape scenes. At this point my schadenfreude senses were tingling so strongly I knew I had to watch it.

Sadly, though perhaps not without good reason, the film never made it to DVD. Unwilling to comb the Internet to buy a VHS copy of a movie I only wanted to see out of pure cynicism, I checked various streaming sites, to no avail. Dejected, I contemplated the experience that might have been, and even made up my own story. I knew the basics, but not any plot details, so I came up with stuff that might potentially earn the everlasting ire of one of the most affable critics to ever retain his credibility in the face of overwhelming optimism. Most of it involved racism. Well, I was surfing YouTube Friday when, to my delight, the Recommended tab led me to North.

North concerns its titular hero, an 11-year-old with good grades, good manners and a boatload of extracurricular activities. He's the kind of child any parent would love to have, but his own parents, played by Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus -- and if that wasn't a ploy to capitalize on Seinfeld, I'll buy a hat just so I can eat it -- are too self-absorbed to notice. The father is a pants inspector, and I never quite caught what the mom did because I was still so caught up on the dad's occupation. Let me just say this, if you like pants jokes, stop reading this right now and go to YouTube. Nay, track down a hard copy, because you'll be so overjoyed you're going to want to hug this. Mr. North's Dad not only has rants about pants, he's got tirades in store for the young executive who got the position based on nepotism.

The film opens with this rant, and North's mom joins in about the whatever-her-job-was-that-wasn't-quite-as-outrageous-as-pants-inspector and North, fed up with it all, has a panic attack. In the very first scene. We don't see this family interact, we don't learn anything about these characters, he just has a panic attack. And I know that Elijah Wood was a child at the time, but it's a miracle his career lasted long enough for him to even audition for The Lord of the Rings, much less win the lead. He might as well have just screamed "I AM HAVING A PANIC ATTACK!" instead of collapsing and yelling.

The episode inspires North to seek legal emancipation from his parents, in the hopes that he might find a pair who would give him the love he so richly deserves. He's aided in his endeavors by the 6th grade "journalist" Winchell, played by Matthew McCurley in a performance that is sure to make you utterly capable of striking a child. In fairness, the writing does nobody any favors, but everything about him is subtly enraging. He not only prints the story, which, despite being the paper of an elementary school, somehow finds itself on the doorstep of every house in town. Winchell sets North up with a slimy lawyer (Jon Lovitz) whom -- in the only moment of the film that even came close to eliciting a laugh -- we meet literally chasing an ambulance.

North takes his parents, who have slipped into a coma-like state from the shock of all of this, to court, presided over by a judge played by Alan Arkin. He tries, and terribly, terribly fails, to channel Groucho Marx, and the line "The defense rests" is, as the Nostalgia Critic rightly noted, one of the worst one-liners in movie history. He awards North emancipation, under the caveat that he must find a new pair of adoptive parents or reconcile with his biological ones by midnight on Labor Day; otherwise, he will be placed in an orphanage.

With North's "credentials" on full display, offers come flooding in, and soon the boy is off is search of love. If you thought these first 15 minutes were arduous, just wait. As it turns out, my imagined story, full of racism and inappropriate humor, hit shockingly close to the mark. The prospective parents are meant to symbolize some aspect of American society, but it resorts to such cheap stereotypes and such jarring adult humor that there isn't a laugh to be had.

First you've got your big Texan family (Dan Aykroyd and Reba McEntire), who naturally represent rampant greed, but the joke is old when you first see them, sitting pretty in their 100-ft-long stretch limo. They want the biggest and best of everything, so they set about fattening up North, and even have a big ol ' song about fattening him up. They make light of the death of their biological son -- who of course was massive-- in a stampede, calling it "a mighty big loss." For some reason, they wear the sort of cowboy outfits that 3-year-olds dress as for Halloween.

And it only gets worse from there. Reiner clearly wanted to make a fantasy epic, but for some reason was unwilling to take the story outside of America. So he travels to Hawaii and Alaska in the hopes that people will buy them as faraway lands and not States of the Union. Governor and Mrs. Ho do at least acknowledge that Hawaii is a state, but he makes it out to be an exotic place of wonder nonetheless. Mrs. Ho speaks with a grating Asian accent, and Mr. Ho disturbingly informs his prospective son that "There is only one barren area on all of our islands. Unfortunately, it's Mrs. Ho." Then he unveils his real reason for adopting the wunderkind: so he can turn North into a poster boy for the state to increase tourism, because if there's one thing Hawaii doesn't have, it's a booming tourist industry. His solution is to plaster North's face on billboards featuring a cheeky octopus pulling down the boy's pants to expose his...well, cheeks. North is understandably horrified, but he just can't manage to get a laugh no matter how many times he rages over "his most private of crevices."

The racism builds to a fever pitch in Alaska where they spray Kathy Bates with orange tan and pass her off as an Eskimo (notice the proper term "Inuit" isn't used). I can overlook the fact that all the houses are made of ice, and even the idea that the extended daylight of summer somehow means that they can't process time. But when they send grandpa (Abe Vigoda) out on an ice floe to die with dignity. I nearly broke my laptop. That practice was never common even at its zenith hundreds of years ago, and they certainly weren't doing this in the mid-goddamned-'90s.

Are they serious? This is a film for children. As much as I detest the constant condescension from everyone but Pixar when it comes to films geared towards younger audiences, I do know that they aren't misunderstood geniuses. While they don't mistake fiction for reality as much as some politicians might say, how many kids would look at the stereotypes depicted on-screen and simply accept them?

Guiding North through his travels is a guardian angel of sorts, played by Bruce Willis. Clearly stuck in his post-Hudson Hawk, pre-Pulp Fiction era (thank God that bailed him out in the same year as this), Willis phones it in and relies on his various costumes -- ranging from an Easter bunny to a product-pushing FedEx man -- to spout some half-formed philosophy about family and life and terrible puns ("North? Always been one of my favorite directions."). He also does the voiceover narration, which is the only aspect of the film that even manages to be unintentionally funny: it makes Harrison Ford's rushed, emotionless delivery in the theatrical cut of Blade Runner sound like a track that combines Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones and Orson Welles. It's hysterically bad.

Ultimately, North realizes that his family wasn't so bad, and even when he finds nice people he feels as if he doesn't belong -- yep, this adoption parable concludes with the epiphany that you won't fit in with anyone but your real parents. But in his absence, all the other children used North's example to essentially terrify their parents into submission. Winchell, with the help of the lawyer, has established himself as one of the most powerful people in the world, and he knows that a reconciliation between North and his parents will end his power trip. So he tries to have North killed.

After 80 minutes of insufferable failed gags and cheerful racism, I thought it couldn't get any worse. Then I got to the end. If for any reason you've read this far and still feel like seeing it for yourself, if only to see if it's really that bad (don't), then leave now. After all that lead-up, all that hare-brained philosophy, we reach the end and...



It was all a dream.

I give up. I realize I've done nothing but describe the plot this whole time. It's because I watched this two days ago and I'm still in shock. I slept on this, and my hatred of North hasn't lessened one iota. How could anyone have approved this? What did Rob Reiner see in this? Rob Reiner! He was one of the most dependable filmmakers of the '80s. When Harry Met Sally. The Princess Bride. Stand By Me. This is friggin' Spinal Tap. He might not have been the greatest and most visually impressive director, but he had the Midas touch when it came to quality scripts.

What's saddest about this film is that clearly these people thought they were making the next great fantasy epic. But it's hard to be The Wizard of Oz when you travel to completely real, not-that-exotic locations and try to make them out to be mystical wonderlands. At one point Governor Ho mentions how people don't treat Hawaii like a part of America, but Alan Zweibel's script and the ridiculous set and costume designs of both Alaska and Hawaii clearly alienate them from the continental U.S.

I genuinely feel sorry for the cast and crew. The kids no doubt thought they were a part of something huge, and Reiner and Zweibel seemed sure that this was going to be yet another hit. But nothing works. The physical humor and sight gags range from dopey to offensive (including a bit involving a Hasidic Jew at the pants factory), and it's downright vulgar at times. Throwing in some truly adult material is nothing new to kid's fare: classics ranging from Rocko's Modern Life to Ren & Stimpy to Pixar features all inject gags that most under 16 couldn't get, but it's just outright terrible here (the 'barren' line, for example).

The actors fare no better. Arkin is just awful, and Willis might as well have been waving his paycheck at us when he was on-screen. McCurley should be used as Exhibit A for all those who detest children in film: he's grating, mugging, shrill and desperately unlikable, even beyond the point that, as the villain, you're not supposed to like him. I actually wonder if the film originally had no villain -- and it certainly suffers for having one, because all of the scenes with Winchell the lawyer Belt break the already-shambolic flow -- but they rewrote the part when they got too far into shooting to recast and discovered just how terrible the kid was. I know this is awfully mean, but McCurley -- who got his start, like most children, in commercials -- never got any substantial work in the industry after this, and it makes make oddly glad. Wood fares the best out of anyone, which is good, I suppose, as he's the lead, but even then he really only looks decent compared to everyone else.

After sitting through this thing, I must agree with Ebert. I hated every second of this film, in the way that I detest torture porn and whatever offensive, insane commercial for Jesus that Kirk Cameron is working on this week. I'm not the kind of person to really go after child actors -- despite my general antipathy regarding their performances -- but I suddenly understood how some grown people could be so vicious to these kids. This movie is worse than such legendary pieces of trash as The Room and Manos: The Hands of Fate, because at least they lapse into unintentional comedy. This film is shooting to be funny, and therefore when it fails, it fails big. I don't even know why I watched the whole thing. Had I been old enough in '94 to see a film by myself and know how to process it, I would have unquestionably left and asked for a refund, something I've never done. While time has eroded some of its legend to show the beating heart underneath that really wanted this to be great, North remains one of the worst films I have ever seen, and I actively urge you never to watch it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Love is a dangerous game. It's a nerve-wracking, devastating affair full of desperation, anger, regret, and a pain so indescribable that all the music in the world has never captured it all. At least, that's what love represents when you lose it. Breakups and unrequited love generally result in a sort of emotional fallout, the kind that leads a man to spill his secrets to the barkeep before drunkenly singing "their song" to a room full of increasingly uncomfortable patrons. The reminiscing doesn't come until later.

Joel Barish hasn't reached that stage yet. At the start of the film he's dealing with a nasty break-up with Clementine (Kate Winslet), a free spirit who conflicted greatly with his own withdrawn persona. Jim Carrey takes all that manic energy he usually forces upon the audience and buries it under layers of nervousness and an empathic sense of shame. Already reeling from the end of their relationship, Joel gets another sock in the gut when he learns that Clementine went to the experimental medical firm Lacuna, Inc., which specializes in memory deletion and reconstruction, to erase the relationship from her mind.

Dejected and enraged, Joel rushes in and demands that Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) perform the same procedure on him. That'll show her. Even though Lacuna is inundated for the Valentine's Day season, the doctor pencils him in and tells our hapless protagonist to go home and collect anything with a sentimental attachment to Clementine. He returns to the office, sits in a special chair, and Mierzwiak's assistants, Patrick and Stan (Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo), get to work.

And that's where any possibility of describing the plot in words ends. Director Michel Gondry has always been someone fascinated with the wavy line between dreams and reality, but that was before he partnered with modern legend Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman too deals with the bizarre and fascinating line between dreams and awareness, and the two prove to be a formidable team. The result is a film that continuously pulls the rug out from under you just as you managed to get back up after the last time.

As the process erases Joel's memories, we see his dream personification wander through each memory, constantly upended as the world literally crumbles around him. As the process whisks him into each subsequent scenario Joel finds himself forced to confront the memories he paid to have erased, and he slowly reaches an epiphany: eradicating Clem from his mind will erase the only happiness he ever knew. Eventually he manages to convince the Clementine from his memory of what's going on and the two essentially try to outrun the universe that caves in around them.

Then things just get weird. Joel, in an attempt to "protect" Clem (this is dream Clem, mind you), he runs into older memories, regressing into his childhood while Clementine stares on in bemusement. Editing isn't normally the filmmaking aspect one focuses on with a romantic comedy-drama, but Valdis Oskarsdottir had his work cut out for him when he made a film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry. Images jump, buzz, fade and warp like a hyperspeed music video, yet the style never gets in the way of the deep human understanding Kaufman and Gondry convey.

That understanding ultimately is what propels the film from being just an interesting experiment into one of the all-time best romantic films ever made, and certainly one of the ten best of the decade. Joel's not the only one with issues; the real Clementine must deal with the confusion left by suddenly removed memories, while a mysterious subplot involves Lacuna, Inc.'s secretary (Kirsten Dunst). Patrick's got something up his sleeve as well. Each of these stories adds levels of intrigue and depth to a story already overflowing with both, and it ensures that repeat viewings are rewarding.

Eternal Sunshine is one of those films I have trouble writing about, not only because I want everyone to experience it for themselves but because I worry that I'd only get lost in my platitudes. So perfect is every element -- the editing, the direction, the off-the-wall yet piercing script, the acting -- and so expertly and originally are they arranged that it stands on its own island. I can't imagine anyone having the balls to try to duplicate it, because it's so singular any attempt to build on it will immediately be seen as a ripoff. It boasts career-best performances from Carrey and Winslet, and at the very least all the other actors put in excellent work. Kaufman's script might lack the ambition of his later opus Synecdoche, New York and the wit of Adaptation, but he injects such a knowing sadness and hope into the film that he finally proves true the saying so many dismiss as pithy: 'twas better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.