aimed at in the first place." Turan also asked "How could director Rob Reiner, whose touch for what pleases a mass audience is usually unfailing, have strayed this far?" Leonard Klady of Variety described the film as a "noble misfire" and "that unique breed of misconceived entertainment that only a filmmaker of talent is capable of making." Joe Brown of The Washington Post called the film "a gentle, harmless and rather pedestrian fantasy." Janet Maslin of The New York Times was somewhat more positive, writing that the film "doesn't always work, but much of it is clever in amusingly unpredictable ways." North was a multiple nominee at the 15th Golden Raspberry Awards in six categories including Worst Picture and Worst Director for Rob Reiner. In an interview with Archive of American Television, Reiner defended the film, saying: Siskel & Ebert's reviews Film critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times seemed especially baffled by North, describing Reiner as "a gifted filmmaker" and Wood as "a talented young actor", yet North was "one of the worst movies ever made." Ebert stressed that he "hated this movie" and also suggested the film was so poorly written that even the best child actor would look bad in it, and viewed it as "some sort of lapse" on Reiner's part. Ebert awarded North a rare zero-star rating. Comedian Richard Belzer, who appeared in North, goaded Reiner into reading aloud some of the review at Reiner's roast; Reiner jokingly insisted that "if you read between the lines, [the review] isn't really that bad." An abridged version of the remark quoted above became the title of a 2000 book by Ebert, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, a compilation of reviews of films most disliked by Ebert. Writer Alan Zweibel described the review as "[E]mbarrassing. And hurtful", and stated it was repeatedly quoted to him, his wife, and his son (who had inspired the book North). In an encounter with Ebert years later, Zweibel jokingly said "And I just have to tell you, Roger, that that sweater you're wearing? I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate that sweater." He also keeps a clipping of it in his wallet, which he reads at public events. Ebert and his co-host on Siskel and Ebert, Gene Siskel, both pronounced it the worst film of 1994, an opinion they each came to independently. In their original review, Ebert called it "one of