Normal

Grade: C

Normal tries very hard to cement itself as the next Fargo, but comes off more like The Ice Harvest. The latter film, from 2005, directed by Harold Ramis, was a crime caper that jam-packed as much grisly violence as it could into the hour and a half runtime. It felt like the director of Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Multiplicity, and Analyze This was putting on big boy shoes and yelling “See how grown up I can be?” Normal is equally as short and also has blood seeping into the winter snow. It falls apart when it tries too hard to be a comedy. I wouldn’t have minded it being 10-15 minutes longer to let the story breathe, and play it for real rather than force in so many out-of-place laughs.

A couple of the early jokes work very well. When a character sees a moose, somebody else remarks “Oh, you saw the moose.” THE moose. The town is so small, there is only one. Later, an alert goes off at the police station, informing them there’s a robbery at the bank (THE bank). They’ve never heard that sound before, and wonder if it’s just a test or a drill. Thank God for Bob Odenkirk, who carries the movie in one of his best performances.

It opens with a squirm-inducing scene that had two people at my screening walk out, less than 5 minutes in. It feels like it’s from another movie entirely. After that, we meet Odenkirk as Ulysses – an interim sheriff for the small, sleepy, snowy town of Normal, Minnesota. The sheriff has died, so Ulysses is holding down the fort for 8 weeks until they elect a new, permanent one. We learn this exposition via a series of voicemails he leaves for his wife, with whom he has been separated. At first, I thought this was a cool way to get us up to speed, but it quickly comes across as voice-over narration recorded in a studio. He’s a cool cop, just killing time and running out the clock while he’s there – or so he thinks. We see him issue a parking ticket, and the driver is upset when they come out immediately to see it – only to find that it says “Park better.” “I like the way you law,” Ulysses is told.

Once the robbery at THE bank goes down, some truths come out about various setups, including what really happened to the former sheriff. From there, the entirety of the town is open for fights to take place, anywhere and everywhere, uninterrupted, just like on any movie set. I don’t remember many extras, if any. Everybody we see is a character who knows what’s going on, and only exists to serve the plot. Nobody is too occupied or injured to deliver a lame one-liner, and deaths are played up for laughs. 

I’m usually a sucker for a nice, thoughtful piece set in a modest, obscure, wintry city (like Nebraska, which features Odenkirk). The kind where you feel relief when you’re brought in from the cold to a colorful diner or dive bar, greeted by a “What’cha drinkin, honey?” Normal promises an experience like that at the beginning, and I enjoyed some early moments, until the overactive screenplay machinery takes over, and it tries to do too much in too little time.

You wonder how this could have a happy ending, but it does, come hell or high snow. The climactic bloody shootout/face-off has the remaining characters suddenly all friends again, sharing a pie. It’s followed by an epilogue, where the wife finally picks up the phone – leading to nothing but the end credits. I felt and gained so little from Normal. It’s a disappointing blip, too short to be meaningful.

Grade: C