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Like many other movie lovers, I’ve never outgrown my love of animated movies. I enjoy the fantasy of a good Disney fairy tale and the sophistication of a Pixar movie. I sometimes even love the ones that are just plain brainless, silly fun. But Norm of the North tests the limits of my devotion.
This animated arctic adventure tells the story of a special polar bear named Norm (voiced by Rob Schneider)—one of just two polar bears who are able to speak to humans. Through the years, the animals of the arctic have gotten used to the occasional tourists. Some even cater to them. But when Norm discovers that a greedy real estate developer (Ken Jeong) is planning to develop an arctic housing community, he sets out to New York City with a trio of resilient lemmings to save his home by infiltrating the development company.
Norm of the North opens with a shot of a cruise ship in arctic waters—a shot that looks shockingly amateurish, almost like something out of a 10-year-old video game. And that’s just the beginning of this astonishing animated mess. The graphics are distractingly bad, complete with flat backgrounds and characters that look anything but natural. It’s animation that may have seemed groundbreaking 15 years or so ago, but it isn’t even up to average straight-to-home-video standards today.
If you manage to pull your attention away from the bad animation, though, you may also realize that the story makes very little sense. Major plot points are given little or no development, and the clichéd characters often act completely at random. Too many things in this story happen just because. The conflicts are weak, the action is minimal, and, in one sadly self-aware moment, the film even admits out loud that its villain is completely one-note.
Many aspects of this film just feel a little too familiar—as if the filmmakers had attempted to copy parts of successful animated films and put them all together in a wacky adventure with an ecological message (because, well, caring about the Earth is so in right now). The creepy-looking, poorly-animated lemmings feel like an awkward attempt to rip off the comic sidekicks of the Madagascar movies—to blend the silliness of the lemurs with the hardiness of the penguins. But instead of adding to the story, they spend most of their scenes peeing and/or farting.
Still, I can overlook a whole lot of faults in an animated movie if it’s at least fun for kids. After all, despite my love of animated films, I’m not exactly the target audience. But the fact that I saw the film with two little girls who gave up about halfway through tells me that it’s not just me—that Norm of the North is truly enjoyable for viewers of no ages.
