Danny Huston's 1988 Directorial Debut Mr. North is a Very Nice Motion Picture. Pleasant as Well!

Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.

I like Anthony Edwards but every time I see him as the lead in a movie I assume that someone much more exciting and charismatic probably passed on the part. 

I’m not always wrong! 1988’s Miracle Mile, Edwards’ best film as a leading man, came very close to starring Nicolas Cage and Jennifer Tilly instead of the now real-life couple Edwards and Mare Winningham. 

I briefly sabotaged my enjoyment of Mr. North, which was released the same magical year as Miracle Mile, meanwhile, by imagining Nicolas Cage in the title role instead of the ragingly acceptable Edwards. 

Mr. North would undoubtedly be a better, more compelling and convincing movie with a genius at its center rather than a consummate professional but it’s a winner with the Revenge of the Nerds and Top Gun as well. 

A true family affair, Mr. North marks the directorial debut of Danny Huston, who was still in his twenties when he directed a screenplay co-written by his legendary dad John co-starring his half-sister Anjelica and Virginia Madsen, who the director turned ubiquitous character actor was married to for a few years. 

John Huston was at one point supposed to play the key supporting role of James McHenry Bosworth, a wealthy Harvard man relegated to a homebound existence by his inability to control his bladder.

The Academy Award winner was ultimately too ill to play even a sickly old man so Robert Mitchum, a friend of the Huston family, stepped in to play the role, lending it his trademark dignity and gravity. 

The Huston name helped attract an extraordinary cast for what is essentially a pleasant Sunday afternoon of a movie. Mr. North costars Lauren Bacall, Harry Dean Stanton, Mary Stuart Masterson, Tammy Grimes, David Warner, Christopher Durang and Mark Metcalf. 

But the film would not work without Edwards, who gives the all-important title role a breezy, bulletproof self-confidence that never veers into off-putting arrogance.

Mr. North is a prescient exploration of white male privilege. It’s about how a handsome, self-assured, well-spoken white straight Ivy League graduate would strike 1920s New Englanders as not just impressive but something close to superhuman. 

Huston’s exceedingly likable directorial debut opens with T. Theophilus North (Edwards) quitting a job tutoring wealthy, insufferable brats in 1920s Rhode Island and securing work reading to depressed, housebound patriarch James McHenry Bosworth (Mitchum). 

Mr. North is something of a Manic Pixie Dream Boy. Simply being around him reconnects the older man with his long lost lust for life. The Ivy Leaguer with the winning smile soon wins over both the servant class and the wealthy elite.

For reasons he can’t quite understand, our hero’s body produces an unusual amount of electricity, so when he touches people a strong electric shock sometimes occurs. 

When I was a child and I first discovered the concept of static electricity and static shock it seemed like a minor form of magic. How could the human body do that? It had to be a trick of some sort. 

The townspeople view static electricity much the same way. Though he makes no claims for himself, North is seen as a healer, a miracle man whose touch can magically make sick, suffering souls healthy.

I assumed that Madsen played the female lead here and while there is an undeniable attraction and chemistry between her and Edwards’ character she is ultimately the soulmate of another. 

Madsen is characteristically delightful as Sally Boffin, an Irish maid with red hair and a thick brogue who is seen by  her boss Sarah Baily-Lewis (Tammy Grimes) as hopelessly inferior because she is an immigrant and a worker. 

Madsen’s fetching lass is hopelessly in love with Michael Patrick Ennis III (Christopher Lawford, Peter’s lookalike son) the scion of a prominent family but fears that his mother will not let them be together. 

Edwards’ pure-hearted intellectual gives the lovely young woman encouragement, support and advice when he understandably wouldn’t mind giving generously of himself as well. 

I was surprised to discover that the semi autobiographical Thornton Wilder novel that Mr. North is based upon was published in 1973 because it feels so old-fashioned and quaint. 

Mr. North feels like a movie that could have been written or filmed when it takes place. Instead it’s a movie out of time, an artfully constructed throwback to an earlier and more innocent time. 

I went into Mr. North with low expectations but once again found myself surprised by an obscurity in Madsen’s voluminous filmography. 

Mr. North is a very solid piece of All-American entertainment. It’s good but more than that it’s a nice movie and a pleasant movie. Mr. North is self-consciously modest and slight, yet another assured literary adaptation from an old master and his green but talented son. 

Though he made a few more movies, Danny Huston’s future lie in acting rather than directing but he does a fine job here. 

Madsen’s early filmography is chockablock with movies that are considerably better than I anticipated. I hope that holds true going forward as well, because there are only so many movies like Hot to Trot a guy can take, and I write that as someone who has made a silly but satisfying career out of covering egregious nonsense like that. 

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