Hollywood North

As Project Greenlight has already proved, there’s nothing quite so entertaining as a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of a movie in which everything goes wrong. And while Hollywood North does a fairly effective job of portraying just that, the film had the potential to be a biting satire of not just the movie industry but of the way Hollywood views Canada (hence the title). Unfortunately, the movie seems content to simply exist as a wacky comedy (how else do you explain the presence of Alan Thicke?), which is somewhat disappointing. Hollywood North follows producer Bobby Meyers (Matthew Modine) as he attempts to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to make a film based on a beloved Canadian novel called Lantern Moon. But when a washed-up Hollywood star named Michael Baytes (Alan Bates) is cast in the central role, he insists on making changes that effectively turn the film into an action picture (with the much less ambiguous title of Flight to Bogota). Not helping matters is the presence of Sandy Ryan (Deborah Kara Unger), a filmmaker who’s on hand to document the entire production. Hollywood North is enjoyable enough, in a movie-of-the-week sort of way. With Flight to Bogota, screenwriter Tony Johnston and director Peter O’Brian have done a fantastic job of recreating the sort of cheesy low-budget action flick that was all-too-common in the ’70s. And the various behind-the-scenes shenanigans are entertaining, in a manner that’s more farcical than anything else. But the movie completely falls apart in the last 20 minutes, with Baytes believing that he’s under attack from a Cuban freedom fighter (rather than his character, you see). It’s a turn of events that probably looked better on paper, but just doesn’t work; everything comes to a halt as this exceedingly silly plot-twist threatens to turn the movie into a bad SNL sketch. But Modine proves to have a real knack for comedy, and the eclectic supporting cast keeps things interesting. It’s just a shame that Hollywood North never becomes anything more than an innocuous time-waster.

**1/2 out of ****