Norm Of The North Could Already Be One Of The Worst Films Of The Year

You have to hand it to Rob Schneider – he knows way around a turkey like few other actors in Hollywood

Now his latest role, voicing a polar bear in animated film ‘Norm of the North’, is an early contender for the worst-reviewed film of the year.

And it’s still only January.

In the movie, made by little-known studio Assemblage Entertainment, penned by former 'Scooby-Doo’ writers Steven and Daniel Altiere and the feature debut of director Trevor Wall, Schneider’s fish-out-of-water polar bear travels to New York to try and stop a developer luxury homes in the Arctic.

As well as Schneider, perhaps still recovering from the withering reviews of Adam Sandler’s 'The Ridiculous Six’, in which he also starred, it provided a pay day for Ken Jeong, Heather Graham, Colm Meaney and Bill Nighy.

But it’s been savaged unmercifully by critics, achieving the relatively rare 0% approval rating on aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, meaning that so far it doesn’t have a single positive review.

Perhaps it’s something to do with coming back to work that first week after Christmas, but not a single reviewer has been kind to the movie, thus far.

Said Glen Kenny in the New York Times: “The title character of 'Norm of the North’ may be a bear, but the movie is a dog. Actually, that assessment is unfair to dogs - real, anthropomorphic and metaphorical.”

Soren Anderson of the Seattle Times added: “No. No. Just no. No child should be exposed to this.”

Michael Rechtshaffen in the Los Angeles Times said: “While the film, with its preponderance of potty jokes, might placate the very young already primed by boisterous singing chipmunks, older viewers will likely find it all harder to, uh, bear.”

Robert Abele in The Wrap took aim at the craft of the movie too, adding: “The animation and character work is TV-level: so frenetic so that no real artistry is needed, but not so busy that you keep from noticing how the same background humans are repeated throughout.”

Though while hardly a box office bonanza, it’s not done horribly at the box office, making $8.8 million back from its modest $18 million budget so far.

You can check out the trailer - if you dare - below…

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Image credits: Assemblage Entertainment/Getty