While the amount of animation studios putting out theatrical films feels larger than ever, it's still pretty common for people to feel that Disney and Pixar remain the kings in terms of overall quality. Dreamworks seems to have dipped in overall quality and popularity in recent years, Blue Sky Studios has done a great job with The Peanuts Movie and little else, and while films like Minions certainly do well with the younger crowd and box office returns, films that reach the generation-crossing success of recent hits like Inside Out and Frozen are still few and far between.
Norm of the North does nothing to change this. In fact, this is a case where I'm baffled a film ended up in wide theatrical release instead of simply going straight to video or digital outlets. I always seem to see obscure and usually lousy-looking cartoons like this every time I visit a Redbox kiosk. Ironically, I recall several of them boasting Rob Schneider as one of the main voice actors, and he voices the titular character here. Then again, maybe it's not so ironic considering the movie's quality.
Norm is a polar bear who's spent his whole life in the Arctic, but has trouble fitting in due to sympathizing with the animals he tries to hunt. Early on, Norm stumbles across a film crew attempting to shoot a promotional video for possible condos in the area, but with the rest of the animals doubting his warnings, he decides to sneak on the crew's ship back to New York City in hopes of convincing their boss Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) to leave his home alone, as he conveniently has inherited the gift to speak to humans from his missing grandfather.
As it turns out, Greene and his assistant Vera (Heather Graham) are now interested in creating an ad campaign revolving around a polar bear after seeing Norm in some of their Arctic footage, and everyone who sees Norm conveniently believes he's a human actor in a very convincing bear suit. Norm plays along with the idea and is able to convince Greene to hire him for the campaign with the hope of ultimately spreading his message of Arctic preservation when he's at his most prolific, thanks in part to a dance routine of his own creation called the Arctic Shake.
Summing up the plot to this film sounds less like the plot to a real movie and more like a fever dream. The film never provides a good answer as to why Greene thinks anybody would want to live on an Arctic glacier, and when Norm later discovers that his employer has had his grandfather secretly locked up, the only explanation the grandfather gives is, "This is what happens when you try to deal with Wall Street fat cats!", and the movie leaves it at that. The story also attempts to garner sympathy for Vera, repeatedly stating that her intelligent daughter Olympia (Maya Kay) can only get into a good school with Greene's approval. Olympia isn't in the film enough to gather any audience attachment, and when Vera inevitably has a change of heart and goes against Greene's greedy wishes, the last scene lets us know that Olympia ended up in the school anyway because she was just that smart. Good to know that plot thread meant nothing.
The other characters do nothing to grab audiences, either. I'll admit that Schneider's voice is actually a good fit for Norm, but his wisecracks aren't funny, and he has little else to offer. As Greene, Jeong mostly screeches and flails his way through the movie as the most one-dimensional villain imaginable. The main source of comic relief comes from three lemmings who tag along with Norm, and they contribute nothing besides squeaking gibberish, lazy slapstick, and toilet humor. In an early scene where Norm is in Greene's waiting room, the lemmings spot a fish tank, and take the opportunity to run up and relieve themselves. The movie then essentially pauses for 20 seconds to show all the characters observing the peeing lemmings, then the movie continues as if nothing happened.
There are other moments like that that caused me to think, "What am I watching?" in sheer bewilderment, but they aren't frequent. For the most part, the movie is just boring and lazy. Everything in this has either been handled better in other animated films or is just a bad idea conceptually. Even the overall look of the film feels half-baked. The designs for Norm and other animals are serviceable, but the human characters are generally unpleasant to look at, and the amount of detail put into the models and environments feels closer to TV standards than a feature film.
When I saw this on opening night, there were only about 15 people in the theater. Before it ended, 5 of them had walked out, including young kids, the only audience who could possibly find enjoyment in a movie like this. There are many, many other terrible things about it that I didn't even mention, because pointing out everything wrong in Norm of the North would take an essay rather than a standard review. I will attempt that there were two or three jokes that I found decent, and the film ultimately isn't going to go down as one of the biggest travesties ever in my book, but it's still probably the weakest theatrical animated film I've seen in ages, and with Kung Fu Panda 3 now in theaters, there is literally no reason to give it a moment of your time.
Final score: 4 out of 10
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