So any movie starring Bob Odenkirk is a cause for celebration and this new action/comedy, Normal, does not disappoint. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at so many people getting shot, stabbed, killed, maimed, or blown to smithereens—including Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz from TV’s Happy Days sitcom of the Seventies.
Winkler plays the mayor of Normal, Minnesota, a frosty-cold town in the middle of nowhere. Odenkirk plays Ulysses, an interim sheriff (“Like a substitute teacher,” he quips) who has taken the job after the unfortunate demise of the previous sheriff (Gunderson), who froze to death in his underwear in the snow, holding a fly-fishing rod and an augur. “That’s funny,” says Odenkirk. “You usually don’t take a fly rod to go ice fishing.” After a quiet buildup and introduction to the wacky/charming town citizens all hell breaks loose. Since the movie debuted Friday I’ll withhold more details so as to avoid spoilers.
Odenkirk has many moments of great comic timing, typical for him. Since he’s made the action/comedies Nobody (2021) and Nobody2 (2025) I’ll note he’s in familiar comic territory. Normal is like the Coen Brothers’ Fargo meets Nobody, kind of. It features zany plots involving Japanese Yakuza gangsters and Midwestern folksiness. As the action heats up it gets uber-violent, but you know it’s all “good, clean fun”: It’s a silly movie and none of these deaths are real, nor are we supposed to think they are. When they’re in an auto shop and someone gets squished when a car falls off its jacks I burst out laughing. There are several cliches that they satirize: Odenkirk is a disgraced sheriff, due to an unfortunate incident in his recent past. He’s estranged from his wife, to whom he leaves phone messages, angling for redemption. The end is essentially comic, even if the body-count is astoundingly high. It’s not as clever as Odenkirk’s great character Jimmy McGill in Better Call Saul, but that’s a high bar to clear. It’s funny and doesn’t pretend to be more than that.