North

This has been a summer of surprises. Many of the major block busters have either bombed or limped through middling box office, while low-key entries like Forrest Gump have come roaring out of nowhere. North, Rob Reiner's new comedy, is no Forrest Gump, but it's toward the top of the movie heap.

North is devoted to the basic proposition that, sooner or later, everyone gets fed up with their parents. That's especially true for North (Elijah Wood), a gifted sixth grader who feels cursed with the most boorish of parents (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus). How bad is it? Well, dad is the guy who actually inspects those pants before you buy them.

Feeling ignored and unappreciated, the kid retreats to the comfort of his favorite La-Z-Boy. The chair is located in a window of a shopping mall, where an unshaven bum (Bruce Willis), dressed as the Easter Bunny, advises him on being a free agent. That's when North sues the folks and embarks on his satiric quest for the perfect parents.

The result is a cartoonish, star-studded farce that rides unevenly between absurdity and sentimentality.

At its best, North is outrageous and hysterically funny. It's just that Reiner is a bona fide member of the TV generation and he never seems capable of abandoning the tube's conceptual universe.