Normal and What’s Making Us Happy

Bob Odenkirk has pivoted from sketch comedy to dramatic acting and, most recently, to late-middle-aged action star. In the new film Normal, he plays a small-town sheriff who finds out his small town isn’t so normal after all, which will of course require some sexagenarian butt-kicking. The cast includes Henry Winkler and Lena Headey, and was written by Derek Kolstad, the mind behind the John Wick franchise. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/letterboxd.com/nprpopculture http://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:46Speaker 01

  So the Liam Neeson-ification of comedy legend Bob Odenkirk. Have you been keeping up on it? Because it is proceeding apace. He's already pivoted from sketch comedy to dramatic acting, and most recently to late, middle-aged action star in the films Nobody and its sequel. Now he's starring in Normal, playing a small-town sheriff who finds out his small town isn't so normal after all, which will, of course, require some Sexagenarian butt-kicking. I'm Glen Weldon. Joining me today to talk about Normal on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the Film and Television Review Podcast, Leaving the Theater. Hey, Ronald. Hello, Glenn. Also with us is writer Chris Klemick. Hey, Chris.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Hello, Glenn. Hello, Ronald. Briefly, briefly, before we begin, I want to buoy the spirits of anyone who shares my disappointment upon learning that Normal, Minnesota is a fictional town by telling them that I have, in fact, been to liberal Kansas. And when I was there, I took a photo of a liberal police car.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  All right. There we go. In Normal, the film Bob Odenkirk plays-- let me check my notes here. Let's see, I've got it right here. Sheriff Ulysses, who's recently accepted a gig as temporary sheriff in a small Minnesota town to get away from a troubled marriage and some mysterious unpleasantness in his past. That doesn't remain mysterious for long because flashbacks. Turns out, the town is friendly enough. The mayor is played by Henry Winkler, the local barkeep by a blink-and-you'll-miss-her Ayy. Lena Headey. But it's hiding a dark secret, a secret that quickly turns super, hyper, mega-violent. Normal was written by Derek Kolstad, the creator of the John Wick franchise, who also wrote Nobody.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  It was directed by Ben Wheatley, the auteur behind Meg to the Trench, but also some really terrific British horror films like Kill List and A Field in England. Normal is in theaters now. Chris, our action guy, what'd you make of this little film?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Oh, boy, this is tough because I want to love this movie so deeply. And, you know, it just, it just won't let me. Glenn, this is a movie that continually feints towards something less conventional, weirder, more original, and then keeps yanking the wheel back in the direction of the most predictable resolution to any scenario it establishes, the big dumb gunfight. I was initially kind of hooked because I kind of, you know, I mean, I've written about all the John Wick movies and Nobody and Kolstad seems to do one thing. And here it looks like he's actually doing something else. This movie looks like it's going to be a little more High Noon, a little more Fargo, you know, than John Wick or the, the middle aged guy who has a violent past and has been pushed too far.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  And then, you know, again, it just, at every turn, it keeps on disappointing me. It becomes this, this sort of one man against the world mismatch that we've seen so many times. I'm shocked at how many cliches, how many appendages from other movies you can suture together in the space of 90 minutes. If this movie were any more derivative, ultimately, it would be called The Normal and the Furious. So I am, I'm disappointed, guys, I'm disappointed. Hold me.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Right, Ronald, are you gonna hold him? Are you disappointed too? Where'd you come down?

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Okay, so there's three movies that I thought of while watching this. Hot Fuzz, Assault on Precinct 13, and 30 Days of Night. All three of those movies are way better than this one. To reference those three movies, I feel like to come up with this, I think Chris Klemick said it best, it is disappointing. This was a film that I think was not serious enough and not fun enough to be anything. If it had been more serious, I think it would have been a better movie. If it had been more- Fun. I think it would have been a better movie, but it falls down somewhere in the middle. Where I would like to right now be arguing with Chris about how stupid this movie is. But this movie ends up kind of being a nothing burger. Like, I, I want it to be so stupid and silly.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  That we're arguing over like, oh, Ronald, like, come on, man, you're supposed to just have fun in this film. That's what the debate I want to be having. But instead, it kind of just falls tonally flat because of the serious elements. And it's just not fun enough for me to just turn my brain off and watch it. I wasn't really a fan.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, maybe I'm gonna surprise you guys here because I don't think this is a bad movie. Cause I think this thing is barely a movie.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  This is a gesture toward a movie. It's the concept of a movie strung together with masking tape and bailing wire. Everything about this feels like it was hastily patched together in post. There is so much ADR in this movie. There are Madame Web amounts of ADR. Every time a character is not on screen or turns away from the camera even briefly, they get all this extra dialogue. It's always wildly unnecessary. It's either just restating something that we already know, or in the fight scenes, it is these, invariably, these cheesy eighties action movie wisecrack catchphrases like suck on this and you're a slippery one. Look what I've hooked. And I was like, that's what they came up with?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Things happen, so many things happen in this movie for no other reason than to deliver that kind of like, serotonin hit to the adolescent brain to make a 14 year old go, cool. How else to explain how many Final Destination deaths we get in this thing? And look, we all possess that adolescent brain, right? And the adolescent brain doesn't ask much of what it consumes. It has something very specific and very narrow, which is good because that's all this movie is capable of delivering. And in fairness to this film, I'm going to be a little bit more generous than I think you guys are. I'd say about 60% of the time. I was like, well, that's fun. But then drive it home, I was like, there's a reason 60% is not a passing grade.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, that's not a passing grade, Glenn.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  That's right. Because if almost half the time, this movie, which wants to be a breezy good time, is just huffing and puffing, it is just out of breath. And like, in the hands of a decent action filmmaker like Sam Raimi, which has a lot of like, there's a lot of stuff in common, some of those like cheesy ADR catchphrase stuff, that's early Sam Raimi all over the place.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  They should have actually gotten Bruce Campbell to ADR in the quips.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  This is the thing, like, that's when the goofiness is the point. And here, I don't know what the point is here. Because if you're gonna be this glib and this frictionless with how you treat violence, you need to make that the vibe.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  It needs to be frenetic, it needs to be breathless, you need to turn this thing into a transporter or a crank.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  And otherwise, you're just doing whatever this is, and I don't know what this is.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  It's my issue.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  I think you're right. I mean, Chris Klemick, you said Bruce Campbell. I mean, you have Bob Odenkirk.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? Like, you have it right there. You have a guy who has comedy chops and serious chops. I mean, there's a point in the movie where we start to get into the dark past of the character. And I remember thinking, oh, that's why you got Odenkirk. Because for a while, I was like, this could have been anybody. It didn't have to be Bob Odenkirk.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  For the depth, right?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. But he starts to turn and starts to talk a little bit about his past. And then I said, oh, okay, you needed some serious acting. Like, I can believe this person, you know, having a good time, and I could also believe this person has a dark secret in his past that exists. So I feel like, if you have him, then use it the full breadth of his experience in the film, but they just couldn't quite do that.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Right. So, Odenkirk actually contributed to the story here. He has a story credit on this film. Now, I think we should all be well past the point where we're surprised that people who become famous and successful in comedy also have this deep well of sadness that they can tap into on screen. You know, we've seen Robin Williams do that, we've seen Adam Sandler do that, for crying out loud, right?

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Jim Carrey.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah. Carrey in Eternal Sunshine. And, you know, and Odenkirk is a tremendous actor. But I want to use that to talk about one of the screenwriting deficiencies here. This movie, this is, you know, again, 91 minutes with credits. You're thinking that if ever we're going to elide the monologue that's kind of awkwardly shoehorned into the movie where we find- Find out what kind of emotional baggage our hero is dragging around. That's the only reason Lena Headey is in this movie is so that he can unburden himself to her over drinks. And then later revise the thing that he said. So we get it twice. I think that kind of backstory is of great use to an actor, right? It's useful for them to know what they're carrying around.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  The audience doesn't need it, you know, like that is why you get Odenkirk. That's a, I mean, I said the same thing about Sandra Bullock in Gravity. The movie stops for five, I mean, another like tight 90 minute movie that stops as you could tell is like, here's why I'm sad. Like it's enough. You're a good actor. I get that you're sad. It's actually deflating for me to find out exactly why. Huge strike against what wants to be a svelte 90 minute good time.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  You pointed out something that factors into my theory of the case here. I feel like this movie was made for streaming with all the narrative training wheels that streaming content has nowadays where characters just stand around and state and restate who they are, what their relationships are with other characters, what they're about to do, what they're doing, what they've just done. And if your audience is on a couch on a Sunday afternoon, you can get away with that. But I'm telling you, every time one of those flashbacks came up, every time somebody told me who they were, what they're about to do. In the theater, I just felt trapped. I felt prodded. I felt talked down to. I felt condescended to. And look, I want people to enjoy films in theaters. I want movies to come back.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  This film does not benefit from a theatrical setting. This movie is made to fold your laundry too. I'm going to say it. It's not deserving of your full attention because it doesn't know what to do with it. Watching this film, it's like, well, what do you look at? What? What? Here's a decapitation. So would you tell folks? I mean, obviously we're not recommending this film, but would you tell folks to see this in a local Cineplex? I really wouldn't.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  No, I wouldn't recommend it. And I think you're right. That's one of the new ways that I judge sitting in a theater now, which is to say, could I just be sitting at the house watching this? And this is one of those, especially for it to be Derek Colston. Like sometimes I'll re-watch John Wick and wish I was in a theater.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Right, sure.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  I don't want to be on my couch. I want to be at a theater watching this. With normal, I just, I gotta be on my couch. Please let me, I want to scroll Instagram. I want to go like a bunch of pictures to this film. I mean, yeah, apparently they're not thinking that all the way through, you know?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I can't go that far. I mean, as far as I will go with you, Ronald is wishing that this movie was called Eight Week Sheriff. It sounds like a Bravo show that. You would be on Pop Culture Happy Hour talking about and that I wouldn't go near. We are told that he is, he is the sheriff for the interim period of eight weeks until the next election, which I really have some questions about continuity of government in normal Minnesota. Because can't Henry Winkler, the mayor, like, can't he just like appoint an interim sheriff or something? Do they have temp sheriffs? Is there a? That's actually a good example of one of the things, ways in which this movie kind of feints towards something more interesting than what we get. There is an early scene where he is in the armory of the sheriff's department.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  And one like chides the secretary, the receptionist, whoever, for leaving the door to the weapons storage unlocked. But then he's looking at all the military hardware they have in there, all this, you know, the C4 explosives. He says, and he actually says, why do you have this? And she says, well, you know, after nine 11, the old sheriff applied for all these grants. Like, that was a real thing, right? There were news stories about that for years, about these like podunk municipalities getting decommissioned military hardware and, and why? Like, nothing good can come from this. And it's like, oh, is this going to be a satire about the over arming of law enforcement? Of course not.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  No, I mean, like, that's the closest thing this film gets to a point of view. Like, this film so much to be Rebel Ridge, which ironically was, you know, a streaming film. But this is like first draft.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  There's a film I would have watched in a theater, Glenn.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  We all liked Rebel Ridge, right? Rebel Ridge is really good.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  We did, but like, this is Rebel Ridge without a take, without an angle, without a point of view, without a reason for existing. There's also, I'm not going to make a big thing of this because certainly the movie doesn't make a big thing. But there's a queer character here, trans, possibly non-binary character in a storyline that is so underwritten, it feels like good old fashioned tokenism. You know, a shorthand for us to underscore how bad the bad guys are because they don't accept trans people.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  That's how we did this in the eighties. Why, why are we still doing this?

• 13:02Speaker 03

  It's so funny because you say that, you mean in the eighties because they would have been doing it for black characters.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Or women.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, or women, yeah. Anything that's like sexist or racist, oh my God, this person is evil. Which, to be clear, I don't agree with sexism or racism.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  To be clear.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Bold take, Ronald, bold take.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Listen, you gotta say it these days. I'm not, I'm not trying to get canceled on Pop Culture Happy Hour. To use it as a trope in like a film to say this person's so evil, they can't even accept queer folks. And I'm like, yo, that's definitely a nuanced stance. But if you use it as just black and white in films, you actually undercut the importance of acceptance and inclusivity. And in this film, you definitely do that. I'm like, they have bigger fish to fry in this film. But you want us to care about this one issue, which of course we do care about, but it adds to the mess. It just adds to the mess.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  What about the sheriff being named Ulysses? He could be sheriff, Rowan. I think that's right. I think that's the irony. I think like even more than the sheriff in Twin Peaks being named Harry S. Truman, comma, sheriff. I think Ulysses is a, you know, he's a like Madonna, Bono, you know, just just a one-namer figure of mystery.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Well, I think we've exhausted all our takes on what is a pretty exhausting film. Turns out 90 minutes can still be a waste of time.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Too long.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Too long. So we're not happy with this film, but you know what's coming up next? What is making us happy this week?

• 14:27Speaker 00

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• 15:49Speaker 01

  Now it is time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What is making us happy this week? Ronald, I need happy. What's making you happy this week?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  You know what? I got a simple one. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. There's a lot of drama going on on Bravo's Summer House right now. And I have been an OG stan.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  The network that brought you eight week share?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  When you said eight week share, I'm like, what is he looking at my notes? I am right now Bravo is genuinely making me happy. And there's a lot of drama going on in these reality stars' lives. The stars of Summer House, you've got your Kyles, you've got your Amandas, you've got your, your Carls. Carl is my favorite character. And of course you have Ciara West. And there's a lot of drama going on right now between Ciara West and Amanda. I won't bore you with all the details, but between Summer House and The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, which is the newest.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  You made that up.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  No, I did not. I did not. Which is the newest iteration of Real Housewives. I just feel like I'm just having a good time. I'm easy breezy into the summer. I turn it on, I turn my brain off, and then I follow the discourse on threads. I'm having a good time. Bravo is just really making me happy right now.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  All right. So that is Summer House and The Real Housewives of Rhode Island on Bravo.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Don't judge me, Glenn. I don't like when you judge me.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Sorry, sorry. I just, the name is funny. The name, it's a funny name. It's a funny name. Thank you very much, Ronald. Chris Klemic, what is making you happy this week?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Glenn, Light and Magic. The Disney Plus streaming docu-series, Light and Magic. I don't know how I missed it in 2022, but the idea that Lawrence Kasdan, you know, who of course wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and then rewrote Empire and then, you know, becomes the writer-director of The Big Chill and lots of other great movies, did a, a multi-part documentary about the history and evolution of industrial light and magic. The pioneering visual effects house that started to create the revolutionary effects for Star Wars 77. I'm only one year behind on, on the second season, which I gotta say. Was not as interesting to me because the first season, it goes from Star Wars up through Jurassic Park. So it's that inflection point, right? We're getting away from models

• 18:01Speaker 02

  and miniatures and composites and all the visual effects technology that have dominated really the first century of cinema, pushing towards the digital revolution. In season two, you know, it's just, it's just not as much fun to watch all this, this footage of, of people sitting there clicking mouses instead of painting models and, you know, Phil Tippett like animating his stop motion or, or go motion, to use the Tippett term for his, you know, animating his, his at-ats and his ta-tans and, uh, and things like that. But I was just delighted by it. You get to see, you know, in addition to people who, who normies would probably recognize, like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, you know, you get visual effects legends like Phil Tippett and, and Dennis Murin and John Knoll, and you actually get to see them age over the course of these interviews over,

• 18:43Speaker 02

  over decades, which becomes kind of unexpectedly moving on top of just all the, the film nerd stuff. I, I will never not get a dopamine hit from seeing someone paint a model of a Star Destroyer or whatever. So light and magic on Disney Plus. It made me very happy.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Just a quick note, Jurassic Park, another film that if it is in theaters, I am watching it. I do not want to watch that on my couch. I want to watch that in theaters.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Uh, what's making me happy this week? Well, anyone who knows me knows that there's only one job to which I feel temperamentally suited, which is of course lighthouse keeping. Uh, I've wanted to be a lighthouse keeper all my damn life. I was born too late. Some people watched Robert Eggers, The Lighthouse and saw a shattering chronicle of the descent into madness. I saw a vocational training video. Every so often, an abandoned lighthouse comes up on Zillow and I'm the guy who posts it to the group chat and tries to convince my friends that we could all pitch in and make this happen. It will never happen for me because my friends are no fun at all. But who did make it happen are the folks at Project Lighthouse on YouTube and on Instagram.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  They are the underscore lighthouse underscore centers. This is a father and son who are restoring a decommissioned wolf trap lighthouse in the middle of the Southern Chesapeake Bay. They're also doing one.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Farther north, both of those lighthouses are ones that I sent around to my friends. I still have their listings in my phone, and I envy these guys so much. Less so now that I see how much work is involved, which is a tremendous lot. But you know, whenever a poster there is turns up in my feed, my black, desiccated husk of a heart skips a beat. I become a romantic for like a brief two-minute window. The content isn't particularly romantic, of course, it's just, you know, property renovation content. I have consumed so much more paint-stripping content than I thought I ever would in my life, and my algorithm doesn't know what to make of that, because my algorithm is just a steadily stream of like fitness gays and drag queens and Tolkien deep dives. And then there's these two guys celebrating because they've just installed a door.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  I am so in for the long haul on this. I can't wait to see how things turn out. That is the underscore lighthouse underscore centers on Instagram and Project Lighthouse on YouTube, and that is what's making me happy this week. That brings us to the end of our show. Chris Klemic, Ronald Young Jr., thanks so much for being here and showing me that I wasn't wrong about this movie.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  No problem, Glenn. No, Glenn, your response was quite normal.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I need that reassurance sometimes. This episode was produced by Hafsa Fatam and Mike Katz and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Alok Min provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. And once again, if you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.

• 21:34Speaker 00

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