Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Takes itself way too seriously

Beautiful, moving film.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The people who made this movie should have sat down and taken some Ritalin before they began.The story concerns the efforts of Bobby Myers (Matthew Modine), a Canadian lawyer in 1979, to make a movie out of one of his homeland's most beloved novels. It fancies itself as a funny and slightly biting critique of the business and art of making movies and it could have been that if it had just been able to calm the heck down. It seems like when they wrote the script they just threw in every single possible idea anyone could come up with that fit the movie's theme, with the result being a film that can't give any story element the proper attention.Here's a list of the things Hollywood North tries to take on – the distorting effect big stars have on how a movie is made, the Canadian film industry as a tax write-off, how well meaning filmmakers are changed into manipulative bastards by the demands of just getting the movie finished, the capricious and totally nonsensical way scripts are rewritten, the dominance of Hollywood over filmmaking in Canada, a big American star (Alan Bates) who's jingoistic and paranoid over the Iranian hostage crisis, a leading lady (Jennifer Tilly) who lives and dies on the set and dislikes real life, the lure of celebrity and the evolution from a good-hearted and hopeful filmmaker to a toady and enabler of the big star, a young actor (Fab Filippo) getting his first big break and an old director (John Neville) trying to prove he can still cut it, an aspiring filmmaker (Deborah Kara Unger) trying to shoot a documentary of the big budget production while also filming her own movie on the weekends, a scam to use the big movie's resources to get the small movie made, the reasons for on set romances, an out-of-left-field romance between Modine and Unger's characters, the unending stream of rationalization that is used just to keep a film project moving forward and a happy ending that doesn't relate to any of the other things in the movie.That's just too much weight for an 89 minute long comedy to carry. There's not enough time, so almost everything in the film is either too short or too fast to develop in any way. Characters have to say out loud what scenes are about, things that should be important moments in the story come and go and are never heard from again, Matthew Modine's character has to change from frazzled and overwhelmed movie neophyte to cynical and fast-dealing shark and back again at least 3 times because that's what a scene demands.If they could have just relaxed and decided to leave some things out, this could have been a much better film. When Alan Bates character goes nuts at the end and starts punching out extras because he thinks the movie is real, it's pretty funny. John Neville has a really nice scene as the old director trying to pump up the confidence of his nervous young star. There could have been a very nice dynamic between Modine's naïve first-time producer losing his innocence and Unger's more hard-headed artist trying to preserve her self-respect. But is all gets sort of lost in the jumble.Hollywood North lacks a central purpose. Instead of being a movie about one thing, it tries to be everything anyone could ever think of and ends up being something that very few folks would ever want.

Hollywood North's storyline was good (A producer buys the film rights of afamous Canadian novel known as "Latern Moon" and plans the production, buteverything doesn't go according to plan when Hollywood gets involved and thedocumentary filmmaker catches the whole debacle of film.) and the film hadmuch potential, but most of the acting lacked depth. Hence, the characters were not believable and flat. Unfortunately, they spent a lot of money making a film that did not make very much money in he end. The actor in it that did a great job was Kim Coates.

This movie captures the absurd essence of an overbearing American patriot actor -- one that believes his work (and politics) are as crucial to the American people as the opinions of the President himself. Alan Bates captures this mindset perfectly as Michael Baytes, and I will immortally remember Bates as this character. This is a movie for Canadians and Americans alike. It is a valuable piece of cinema, that which is able to take its audience through the magic of making a film and reveal just how easy it is for the producer and director to lose complete control to the will of the actors and innumerable outside forces. Wonderfully, "Hollywood North" does not suffer from the subject that it portrays: Peter O'Brian directs with precision and complete control, and commands both the serious 'behind-the-scenes' portion of the movie, and the movie-within-the-movie, "Flight to Bogota" with clarity and insight. If you are at all interested in the wit and strength of Canadian cinema, "Hollywood North" is a great place to start.

I saw Network the night before I saw Hollywood North, so I went into it expecting something along the same lines. As a satire, Hollywood North doesn't swipe its targets with a scalpel; the movie doesn't commit to its subject matter enough to cross the line from comedy to satire. This is too bad given the great performances in this movie. This is the first movie I've seen where I didn't hate Matthew Modine, and the rest of the cast is great, especially Deborah Kara Unger and John Neville. . The faults with this movie are in the writing, which failed to take very many chances.But this movie is well worth sitting through for the finale. After the funniest armed standoff I've ever seen, the big American star, modelled on John Wayne, blows up his own trailer, bringing the production of the movie within the movie to an end.