Watching this film is like trying to eat a gallon of tapioca pudding in a single sitting. Even if you love the taste, there comes a point where you're so sick of it that every spoonful becomes torture. In the case of Normal, a lot of fine acting goes to waste in service to an almost intolerably boring story that grinds away at your very will to live.
This is one of those slice-of-life indy flicks that don't have a real plot but instead focus on people connected by a single event. In this case, that linking incident is an auto accident that killed a 16 year old boy. Two years later, his mother Catherine (Carrie-Ann Moss) is practically a basket case, still wallowing in her grief. She has no time or energy for her husband (Andrew Airlie), her other son (Cameron Bright) or really anything else in the world.
Catherine's son was the passenger in the stolen car driven by Jordie (Kevin Zegers). Two years later, Jordie gets out of juvenile detention for car theft and returns home to his angry, resentful father (Michael Riley) and his hot, young and neglected stepmother (Camille Sullivan). Jordie is sort of a ball of undirected guilt and rage who gets a menial job at a pizza place, runs into the old girlfriend of Catherine's son (Britt Irvin) and if you think the whole angry young man + hot and neglected stepmom thing works out the way it usually does in these stories, you're absolutely right.
Walt (Callum Keith Rennie) is the drunk driver who smashed into Jordie's car and killed Catherine's son. Two years later, Walt is a writing teacher who's traded in his own writing for self loathing and drives away his supportive wife (Allison Hossack) with his emotional and verbal abuse. Walt quickly hooks up with a pretty TV weathergirl (Lauren Lee Smith) who's taking his writing class. He also spends a lot of time trying to help his autistic brother Dennis (Tygh Runyan). Dennis was a passenger in Walt's car the night of the crash and was so affected by it, he's has been unable to leave his apartment ever since. But out of guilt or honest concern for his brother, Walt tries to push Dennis into seeing Sylvie (Tara Frederick), a prison pen pal of Dennis' that just got released.
Even though I couldn't enjoy them, I recognize there are a lot of very good performances in this movie. Carrie-Ann Moss is very powerful and present in Catherine's grief. Lauren Lee Smith is pitch perfect as an ambitious young woman who doesn't understand why she's attracted to middle aged men. Camille Sullivan is wonderfully vulnerable as Jordie's hot but lonely stepmom and Allison Hossack is also quite appealing as Walt's wife until the script pushes the eject button on her character. Callum Keith Rennis is great as a guy going through a midlife crisis while trying to deal with his disabled brother, though none of it quite connects it all back to the initial tragedy of the story. Tygh Runyan is a perfect collection of compulsive mannerisms, though Dennis is never allowed to be much more than that. I can't exactly say that Kevin Zegers does a particularly complex or deep acting job here, but he has an undeniable screen presence and never looks like a brainless piece of meat.
However, I was unable to fully appreciate any of those actors because Normal left me squirming in my seat from the crushing sameness in tone and tenor that bled through every elongated moment of this film. This is a one-note script and it keeps plinking away at that one emotional note like somebody left one of those dipping birds on a xylophone. The movie is so intent on hammering away at this single dreary, exhausted mood and how it dominates these three different groups of people, that it ignores the potentially interesting differences between them.
For example, the film never examines the differences between Walt and Catherine. One continues to care for his autistic brother despite his own misery while the other is indifferent and somewhat damaging to her husband and child. The relationships between Walt and Dennis and Jodie and his father are also explained almost entirely through expository dialog. You could take each individual storyline in Normal and expand it out into a deeper, more thematically and dramatically diverse movie of its own. Instead, it's like three separate short films with the exact same style and intent were edited together to create a really, really boring feature.
After a while, I couldn't stand Normal anymore and sat there wishing it would just end already. It was too narratively cramped to hold my interest. You might have a different reaction but I can't recommend any film that punished me like this one did.
This is one of those slice-of-life indy flicks that don't have a real plot but instead focus on people connected by a single event. In this case, that linking incident is an auto accident that killed a 16 year old boy. Two years later, his mother Catherine (Carrie-Ann Moss) is practically a basket case, still wallowing in her grief. She has no time or energy for her husband (Andrew Airlie), her other son (Cameron Bright) or really anything else in the world.
Catherine's son was the passenger in the stolen car driven by Jordie (Kevin Zegers). Two years later, Jordie gets out of juvenile detention for car theft and returns home to his angry, resentful father (Michael Riley) and his hot, young and neglected stepmother (Camille Sullivan). Jordie is sort of a ball of undirected guilt and rage who gets a menial job at a pizza place, runs into the old girlfriend of Catherine's son (Britt Irvin) and if you think the whole angry young man + hot and neglected stepmom thing works out the way it usually does in these stories, you're absolutely right.
Walt (Callum Keith Rennie) is the drunk driver who smashed into Jordie's car and killed Catherine's son. Two years later, Walt is a writing teacher who's traded in his own writing for self loathing and drives away his supportive wife (Allison Hossack) with his emotional and verbal abuse. Walt quickly hooks up with a pretty TV weathergirl (Lauren Lee Smith) who's taking his writing class. He also spends a lot of time trying to help his autistic brother Dennis (Tygh Runyan). Dennis was a passenger in Walt's car the night of the crash and was so affected by it, he's has been unable to leave his apartment ever since. But out of guilt or honest concern for his brother, Walt tries to push Dennis into seeing Sylvie (Tara Frederick), a prison pen pal of Dennis' that just got released.
Even though I couldn't enjoy them, I recognize there are a lot of very good performances in this movie. Carrie-Ann Moss is very powerful and present in Catherine's grief. Lauren Lee Smith is pitch perfect as an ambitious young woman who doesn't understand why she's attracted to middle aged men. Camille Sullivan is wonderfully vulnerable as Jordie's hot but lonely stepmom and Allison Hossack is also quite appealing as Walt's wife until the script pushes the eject button on her character. Callum Keith Rennis is great as a guy going through a midlife crisis while trying to deal with his disabled brother, though none of it quite connects it all back to the initial tragedy of the story. Tygh Runyan is a perfect collection of compulsive mannerisms, though Dennis is never allowed to be much more than that. I can't exactly say that Kevin Zegers does a particularly complex or deep acting job here, but he has an undeniable screen presence and never looks like a brainless piece of meat.
However, I was unable to fully appreciate any of those actors because Normal left me squirming in my seat from the crushing sameness in tone and tenor that bled through every elongated moment of this film. This is a one-note script and it keeps plinking away at that one emotional note like somebody left one of those dipping birds on a xylophone. The movie is so intent on hammering away at this single dreary, exhausted mood and how it dominates these three different groups of people, that it ignores the potentially interesting differences between them.
For example, the film never examines the differences between Walt and Catherine. One continues to care for his autistic brother despite his own misery while the other is indifferent and somewhat damaging to her husband and child. The relationships between Walt and Dennis and Jodie and his father are also explained almost entirely through expository dialog. You could take each individual storyline in Normal and expand it out into a deeper, more thematically and dramatically diverse movie of its own. Instead, it's like three separate short films with the exact same style and intent were edited together to create a really, really boring feature.
After a while, I couldn't stand Normal anymore and sat there wishing it would just end already. It was too narratively cramped to hold my interest. You might have a different reaction but I can't recommend any film that punished me like this one did.