So that’s how it feels when your eyes bleed.
A recurring criticism of Hollywood is that many studios support pandering to audiences if that means their ticket sales might go up. Ticket sales have always been the bottom line in the industry. After all, show business is still a business. Unfortunately, studios often become so focused on dollar signs that they severely undervalue the artistry and originality it requires to create a quality film. This exact situation is evident with the trailer for Norm Of The North. Rarely does a trailer prove itself to be so awful, so stomach churning that it almost sours the audience’s taste for the film in precedes.
Norm of The North is about an anthropomorphic polar bear who travels to the big city to convince humans not to set their “carbon footprint” in the arctic. The premise isn’t offensive, in fact the obvious moral is a positive one. However, by the end of the trailer I felt an urge to buy a polar bear skin rug. The animation looks cheap and straight out of 2005. There didn’t seem to be a single original joke in the two minutes and five seconds of hell I was forced to endure. The jokes that were there were painfully low brow, and uninspired. At one point a herd of caribou are playing poker and the winner of a hand exclaims “Cari-Booyah!” If the trailer didn’t have the Lions Gate logo before it I may have assumed this was a satirical sketch by Funny or Die.
They say not to judge a book by its cover, but in this case judge it and judge it hard. Don’t go see this awful picture that looks like it was made by a committee of out of touch suits; I know I won’t. Admittedly, it is possible that it could be good, but Norm of The North has one of the worst first impression I’ve seen in a long time.