“Who in the Lord’s name put the stink on this film?” – Laura Olandski, The Edmonton Free Press
“I had the misfortune of watching ‘The Normals’ at the cinema, but most people will see the film by accident when their cat steps on their Roku remote’s play button. I am willing to concede that watching the movie at home will elevate the experience just a little, with the convenience of being able to take a quick trip to the kitchen to grab a knife to plunge it into your left temple.”– Nathan Swengster, The Royal Oak Times
“This movie saves its scariest moment for the end – basically a guarantee that there will be a sequel or two.”– Cindy Looper, the Stettler Gazette
The Bottom Line
‘The Normals’ is exactly the fun superhero action thriller cinematic gem that the transgender community didn’t need and, much like that community, it fails to deliver on all fronts.
Director-Screenwriter
Franco Dodge Capicola
Cast
Jason Mamoa, Kevin Hart, Will Smith, Julia Robers, and Caitlyn Jenner
Two logically-minded former white-collar oil and gas professionals turned superheroes team up to take on a super villain who is bent on converting the entire world’s population into a transgender community.
Dodge Capicola has taken more than his fair share of destructive criticism over the years thanks to such films as Gyoti Gondek: This is a Joki are you Gonyet?, Rigless in Grand Prairie, A Derrick Too Far, and The Samsquanch from the Deep Basin Forest. But you have to give him big credit for jumping on the 2SLGBTQIA+ bandwagon and cater a film for a community that will surely not appreciate it. This low-flying, superhero thriller comedy offers an experience like no other movie you’ve ever seen or ever will see – it will knock your IQ down by at least 25 per cent, unless you’re a landman, in which case your IQ can’t get any lower, it’ll just drive you to drink more than you already do. For now, just buckle your seat belt, grab a 1/4 ounce canon of your favourite giggle twig, put your feet up, and enjoy what’s about to come at cha!
In the ordinary city of Mundaneville, where routine and predictability were the norms, lived a superhero named Captain Normal (Jason Mamoa). Captain Normal, known to his friends as Norm Anderson, is a staunch advocate for the status quo and embraced all things conventional – his post-secondary engineering training made this so. His superpowers weren’t flashy or extravagant but centered around logic, reasoning, and a keen sense of what he deemed “normal.”
One day, a mischievous villain named TransNeato (Will Smith) emerged with an unusual plan and an even more unusual superpower called slaptastic. TransNeato, armed with a hypnotic device and a pimp slap that could smack the ugly off of Reese Witherspoon, aimed to mesmerize the entire planet’s population into embracing a new identity—becoming transgender. Men identifying as women, women identifying as men, he-shes identifying as she-hes, cats identifying as dogs, and Justin Trudeau identifying as competent, to name a few transition vectors. The goal was to introduce an element of unpredictability and challenge the mundane routine that Captain Normal held dear.
Captain Normal, feeling a disturbance in the normalcy of Mundaneville, donned his sensible superhero attire, complete with a cape adorned with graphs and charts. His sidekick, Straight Boy (Kevin Hart), a sidekick armed with a rulebook and a calculator, joined him in the quest to restore what they believed to be the natural order of things.
Using their superpowers of logic and reasoning, Captain Normal and Straight Boy confronted TransNeato, who was causing a wave of hypnotic transformations across the city. At some point in early in the film, Captain Normal exclaims, “Your attempts to disrupt the normal flow of life end here, TransNeato!” while brandishing a clipboard filled with statistical analyses.
TransNeato, a trickster who reveled in chaos, laughed maniacally. “Captain Normal, prepare to witness a new era of unpredictability and individuality. You and that black son-of-a-bitch sidekick of yours! That MF is darker than a black steer’s toukas on a moonless night on the prairies. I’m talking blacker than the back of Forest Whitaker’s neck. Sprinkle some rock salt on that MF and you have yourself ‘deeeeeeeep spaaaaaaaace’ kinda black.”
It is at this point of the movie where the character arc’s collide causing a battle of ideologies that unfold as Captain Normal and Straight Boy engage in a debate with TransNeato. With each well-reasoned argument, his hypnotic influence weakened. Captain Normal, using his powers of persuasion and social engineering sorcery, appealed to the citizens’ sense of familiarity and routine.
TransNeato, witnessing the shift in perspective of the general public, realized the importance of balance and harmony. The hypnotic device, now rendered ineffective, was set aside.
In a surprising plot twist that left my jaw on the sticky cinema floor, Captain Normal and TransNeato, with the guidance of Straight Boy’s newfound understanding of transgendery balance, decided to work together to promote a city that embraced both routine and individuality. They encouraged citizens to appreciate the diversity that made Mundaneville unique, allowing for a more inclusive and open-minded community.
Captain Normal, Straight Boy, and TransNeato became unexpected allies, each contributing to the creation of a city that celebrated both routine and diversity. And so, in Mundaneville, a new era began—one where Captain Normal learned that embracing the extraordinary could enhance the beauty of the ordinary.
Holy hell, what sorta bullshit is this?! After seeing the trailer, I fully expected there to be some big time transgender carnage, with rainbow-clad body parts flying across screen, but noooooo… everybody just seemed to get along in a world of diversity and acceptance. Shoot me.
In closing, it is clear that Franco Dodge Capicola was here to make a quick buck with this steaming coil of shit, while riding on the transgender wave, but he missed the mark. The +2SLGBTQIA^6*100MMBBL community will surely not be impressed with how they are portrayed in the film, and the straight-shootin’ right-wingers will cock their shotguns when they experience the plot twist at the end.
And did I forget to mention the characters played by Julia Roberts and Caitlyn Jenner? No, I didn’t. They simply weren’t worth mentioning.
I give this movie an oil recovery factor of 4% under primary, which converts to 0.5 out of 5 stars in imperial units.
