Finding North (1998)

So much average

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

In the course of 90+ minutes, "Finding North" manages to never develop or execute more than 1-2 believable scenes. While you can sympathize with Travis' grief and Rhonda's frustration, the script is so poorly written and full of nonsensical situations (a male stripper performing in the middle of a bank branch lobby???) that it's impossible to take any part of the film seriously.Wendy Makkena is way too broad as Rhonda (her Brooklynese belongs in a freshman college acting class), while the talented stage actor John Benjamin Hickey (of "Love, Valour, Compassion!") tries his best to wring something worthwhile out of the increasingly tiresome Travis. Only Molly McClure as Aunt Bonnie (Travis' dead partner's guardian as a child) strikes a note of authenticity in her performance. Her brief appearance has more impact than the rest of the film combined.

these pages are for commenting on movies, not for making broad, erroneous statements about a people. so without further ado...being a straight and married person; i was moved by the torment that our main character travis furlong was going through. the addition of rhonda portelli into his life was just a reason for us to travel with him on his journey through loss, dispare, and acceptation.this is a good movie. and if you're straight and renting this, then you were intelligent enough to read the back of the box or the plot page here at imdb and still be interested in the story; therefore, you'll "get" it.

Good portrayal of loss and reaffirmation of life. Existential comment on having a direction - NORTH. Keeps you guessing and has a really sweet ending. The location in Denton, TX was great. Straights are not ALL homophobic. Normal is normal. This film shows a friendship which is better than normal!

This film, a chronicle of road trip combining a despondent gay man who has lost his lover to AIDS with a bossy Brooklyneese woman who still lives with her overbearing parents, is calculated to bring chuckles and tears. Unfortunately, the film is riddled with improbable coincidences, hokey sentimentality, and amateurish acting and filming. One hopes to like the film, and I do commend its portrayal of a gay male in reasonably unstereotypical fashion. The blatancy of the script's contrivances, however (they "meet cute," he just happens to come into her bank the day after she saw him almost leap to his death from a bridge - and she's carrying the shoe he left behind, she pursues him all the way to Texas with no encouragement or realization that he's gay, they learn "life lessons" after meeting his dead lover's crusty surrogate mother, etc.), just sabotaged the film for me. It made me squirm in uneasiness, and I never found myself relaxing in the hands of a filmmaker who believed in her material. Thumbs down here.