Tourists from across the world think about moving to the Arctic, but one big roadblock stands in their way; “Norm of the North”. Splash Entertainment’s big screen debut is about a polar bear named Norm (Rob Schneider) who is a breed of many words. Norm’s greatest gripe is simple: there is no room for tourists in the Arctic. But when a maniacal developer (Ken Jeong) threatens to build luxury condos in his own backyard, Norm does what all normal polar bears would do…he heads to New York City to stop it. With a cast of ragtag lemmings at his side, Norm takes on the big apple, big business and a big identity crisis to save the day. Along the way, Norm becomes a pop culture icon, creating the ultimate underdog success story while raising the negative approval rating of the developer’s failing firm. The animated feature film is also loaded with celebrity cameo voice work from Heather Graham, Colm Meaney, Bill Nighy, and Gabriel Iglesias doing dual work as two of the three lemmings.

There’s a point at about ten minutes into “Norm of the North” when you realize that this film isn’t going to get anymore entertaining. It’s a film that is stuffed with about twenty different situational humor gags for Norm to make the most of, without really resembling a plot structure that truly does stand out. I was bored about halfway into the movie because of the movie’s lack of humorous content. I managed one laugh which was a surprisingly unexpected gay joke that came out of left field. I guess it’s just further proof how reaching the screenplay was at all times. The material is so thin that the movie inserts several dance numbers into the movie so it can reach the flimsy 84 minute run time that it has set for itself. While I’m not the biggest fan of musicals, I NORMally (see the word I used there?) wouldn’t care so much if this movie wanted to make itself a musical. The problem comes in the film repeating the same song over and over again without even an attempt to change it up a little bit. The song is hard to find an artist to match it to. Probably because no artist wants to own up to this wreckage, but it’s called “Dance Out of Control”. Whoever wrote this got some serious promotion out of it because this song will have you holding a grudge over your children for years for them making you hear it. I will leave a link below this paragraph so I can share the magic that I got to experience SEVEN DIFFERENT TIMES.
Death to Eardrums

One thing that you can usually count on in children’s animation movies these days is the big Hollywood budgets that go into these movies. Sadly, “Norm of the North” does nothing but leave me wondering whose pockets have holes in them for the 18 million dollars they spent on this film. It’s certainly not in the animation, whose definition and color shading are reminiscent of late 20th century Playstation video games. The backgrounds and landscapes are quite gorgeous, and gave me what little enjoyment I had from the movie, but the character designs themselves make this film a shame that they ever tried to market it to theaters. None of the different characters whether it be Polar Bears or Lemmings ever have visual characteristics that make any of them stand out from the others. If it weren’t for talking monologue scenes, I might never know which character is witness to what storyline development.  The look of the main protagonist might be the worst of all of them though. From afar, Norm’s design doesn’t seem like anything that stands out as a negative, but with the up close shots you see a lot more of the problems. This character’s nose looks like its not made for his head type. Its color tones that followed Norm’s head movements often reminded me of a video game when your character drives off road through a body of water that the game never finalized because you’re not supposed to be there in the first place. Truly disgraceful. It’s not enough that he looks like he doesn’t belong anywhere in this world because the lighting of his fur never matches organically what could be expected when trying to blend in with his backgrounds.

So maybe the price tag isn’t involved in the art direction, but in the vocal work of such a committed cast. That would be wrong as well. Nobody here ever truly stands out, despite all of them never doing anything truly terrible. Rob Schneider does fine, but I often felt that his voice just doesn’t match what I could see coming out of a polar bear. Friendly voices are fine, but I would’ve cast someone with light bass tones. Schneider is just too whimpering to play an animal so towering. Heather Graham is passable, but her character doesn’t have enough to do to make her ever stand out as anyone more than just someone reading lines. Really Ken Jeong is the only actor who sounds like he wants to do something with his part, and boy did he ever. I can’t quite decide, but his vocal work is something between a cat being skinned alive and a high powered vacuum after sucking up a few marbles. It is truly agonizing to listen to his character shriek through every plan that Norm foils in his way. Jeong does good as a villain, but that doesn’t make it any easier to dry the blood that was dripping from my ear by the time the credits rolled.

Overall, “Norm of the North” reminds me just how dangerous the Arctic is and why nobody lives there. If I had to look out my window and see an eight foot tall Polar Bear dancing to the same song over and over again, while being made up of body movements that can only be described as Robocop malfunctioning, then I would probably need 18 million dollars just to get me out of therapy. This film is such a mess that a once-in-a- lifetime situation happened to me tonight. I was joined in the theater by three other families of parents and children. I believe there were ten people in total. Anyway, by the time the movie reached the final twenty minutes, they were all gone. I was left alone in the theater wondering how much I truly hated myself. If kids are asking their parents to go home, then that should be all the evidence you need to stay away from this movie.

2/10