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    Norm of the North

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I'm not joking when I say that "Norm of the north " was one of my most anticipated movies of 2016. The moment I saw the trailer I recognized it immediately as ultra garbage. It's not merely a bad film, it's a bad children's film. That means it's wasting the time of both children and adults. Most people would see that trailer and make it their mission to avoid a movie this bad. Me? I knew that if I were going to make a “worst of the year” post on my blog it would be a false list unless I took a peek.

    When Norm, a talking polar bear (voiced by Rob Schneider) overhears plans by the evil Mr. Greene (voiced by Kim Jeong) to build condos in the Arctic, he is determined to protect his home. Norm concocts a plan. Having familiarized himself with twerking and other soon-to-be dated elements of pop culture (mostly dance-related), Norm travels to New York in order to become the Greene company’s spokesman and sabotage their advertising campaign when it’s at it’s peak.

    There isn't one single thing that's good or even mediocre about "Norm of the north ". I left the theatre dumbfounded, struggling to find proper adjectives to describe this abomination. This story makes no sense. I’ll let go of the fact that Norm can only speak to humans because of a genetic anomaly that runs in his family. Who decided this would-be environmental film was going to focus on the Arctic getting taken over by vacation homes? Who wants to take a holiday in a frozen wasteland? At the beginning of the film we learn that there’s only a 3% interest in the project from investors. So as far as any sane person would be considered, it’s mission accomplished. There’s no need for Norm to travel to New York! But he does, becomes the Greene Company’s mascot and decides to charm the world (by becoming a Youtube sensation) so that he can tell the world when he’s on stage that they shouldn’t go to the North Pole. I don’t get it.

    This is an ugly film. The textures are quickly rendered, there’s little detail in the backgrounds, and the locations look empty, lifeless. 3 lemmings (obvious knockoffs of the Minions from the “Despicable Me” franchise) accompany Norm to the human world and they look like a 12-year-old’s rendering of bad cartoon characters turned into 3D models. This is the kind of thing I would have expected to see back in 2004 in a cellphone commercial. This movie will turn you into a monster. When I saw the first seal appear, with its ugly beady eyes and it’s misshapen, poorly animated body, I thought to myself “this animal, this entire movie is a mistake of creation. Please just put it out of its misery. Where’s my club? ”

    The dialogue is flat, the characters are one-dimensional, the subplots unnecessary or simply idiotic (Norm is given a love interest for reasons I can’t understand) Worst of all is the padding. With a running time of a thousand years (though the box office said 90 minutes) there are endless scenes that go nowhere and mean nothing. My biggest pet peeve in animated films is where the plot stops to have the entire cast dance to a pop song. I counted at least 12 instances where Norm (or some other Arctic creature) told everyone to stop and look at them wiggle their poorly rendered body on-screen to some generic pop song. You cut out all those moments, the bad jokes (at least 2 of which consist of “look how long it takes for the lemmings to pee! ”), the flashbacks and the brain-numbing sub plots you won’t care about and you’ve got a 22-minute episode of a TV show that wouldn’t even get aired.

    The worst thing about this picture is that you can’t understand how bad it is unless you’ve seen it. I was so distraught after I left the theatre that I sought companionship in the young lady at the box office but I couldn’t adequately explain to her how dreadful the film was. She began talking about a lousy DVD she had once rented from Blockbuster, how THAT was the worst film ever. The difference though between “Norm of the North” or living contradictions like “Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated”, “Curse of the Zodiac” or “S. I. C. K. : Serial Insane Clown Killer” never made it to the theatre. If it weren’t for Wikipedia and deranged film obsessives like myself, the likeness of “Boo” or “King of the Lost World” would fade into obscurity like an old moldy sandwich being flushed down the toilet. “Norm” got released in theatres. Children were taken to see it. I felt things I’ve never experienced before after the credits finished rolling. I’m not making a joke when I say that I felt depressed and angry. I took time off, vacation time from my paying job to get beaten nearly to unconsciousness by a project made by hundreds of people that simply didn’t care. They pictured your children in their heads and said “Kids are dumb, they’ll eat this trash right up! ”

    I’d compare this “Norm of the North” to a sentence in Hell, but once you’re in the Inferno, it can’t get any worse. “Norm of the North” is a mathematical line that infinitely gets closer to zero without ever actually touching it but is impossible to discern from zero. It manages to get worse every single time you look back at the screen. It’s only March but without a doubt I can say that “Norm of the North” is one of the worst films of 2016. (Theatrical version on the big screen, March 31, 2016)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  2.4.2016 age: 26-35 2,866 reviews

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