Release date: July 4, 2017
Film: Norm of the North
Tagline: It's been TEN YEARS since Nostalgia Critic begun! As a way of saying thanks, he’s looking at one of his most requested films. God help him.
This review contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: The end of Norm's brother Stan's brief appearance has the Critic dubbing into him that his actor Gabriel Iglesias is off to film The Nut Job 2, The Annoying Orange: Halloween Funtacular and Coco.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Norm's first lines in the film, "Don't listen to the haters, Norm! You got this!", is reinterpreted by the Critic as something that his voice actor Rob Schneider would tell himself every morning.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The Critic claims that Norm of the North is so bad that he has found enlightenment.
- Bait-and-Switch: After Norm randomly starts dancing for no reason, the Critic says "That's like if in the middle of this review, I randomly started dancing"... and then stares into the camera for a few seconds before continuing the review as normal. Then he randomly starts dancing a few minutes later.
- Call-Back:
- The Critic claims to have attained enlightenment such that he can predict the plot of Michael Bay's Transformers Film Series, something he actually tried for Transformers: The Last Knight three weeks prior to this episode.
- Malcolm and Tamara decide to play games before taking part in the sketches because the clips of this film alone sicken them. The Critic gives them a free pass, especially given their prominent roles in the Wonder Woman (2017) review a fortnight before.
- Cliché Storm: The Critic mocks the film for being a blatant ripoff of much better animated films, to the point that he says the film is being animated by computers.
- The Commandments: The Critic claims that, only ten minutes in, the film has already created two new commandments: "no twerking whales" and "no saying you're not gonna do something followed by a scene of you immediately doing it".
- Conspiracy Theorist: The film's plot made so little sense the Critic concocts a theory as to how the film was made. One of his ideas was that the plot was stolen from a draft story so bad even Adam Sandler wouldn't use it for his films, then Lionsgate made a movie out of it before Netflix bought the rights.
- Drinking Game: The Critic puts up a "What Thrown Away First Draft Character from Another Movie Was This?" game identifying various character archetypes the film apparently ripped off from other, far better animated films. He compares:
- Norm to Alex the Lion (a social misfit)
- A pair of caribous to Rutt and Tuke from Brother Bear
- The lemmings to various annoying side characters (see "Take That!" below)
- Dull Surprise: Malcolm and Tamara are not too surprised that the Critic had an extreme makeover after seeing Norm of the North.
- Follow the Leader: The Critic claims Norm of the North is trying to be the next Happy Feet, but with polar bears.
- Fridge Logic: A Running Gag involves the Critic pointing out the plot holes in the film.
- I Knew It!: Malcolm and Tamara's reaction to the revelation that the "enlightened" Critic has seen Norm of the North.
- Medium Awareness: The Critic begins the review acknowledging that, unlike most films he reviewed, Norm of the North is not very old, or at least has connections to older source material, but he will nevertheless review it in honor of his fans who recommended this film to him, in celebration of his tenth anniversary.
- Mockbuster: The Critic claims that the major sign of the film being terrible is that it doesn't have a mockbuster of its own, unlike several major animated films.
- MST3K Mantra: Invoked — the Critic tries to explain Norm's otherwise unexplained ability to communicate with humans simply by saying that it's a movie.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The Critic has this response upon realizing that he shaved his head in response to a film that he doesn't consider to be among the worst he's ever reviewed.
- Nausea Fuel: The Critic considers the film's tendency to use spinning camera angles to be this.
- Parody Commercial: Noting how the film at times feels like a commercial, the Critic creates one of these for Klondike Bars, a product with polar bears as their mascot. In response to the question "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" he asks who would watch Norm for one, before being coldly turned down upon suggesting the idea.
- Questionable Casting: The Critic thinks that Ken Jeong was given a potentially career-derailing role as Mr. Greene because Patton Oswalt outright refused the role.
- The Scrappy: The Critic's opinion of the lemmings.
- Self-Deprecation: The first scenes of the review has Malcolm and Tamara staring at a beam to the sky around their office outside expressing envy for people with boring 9-to-5 jobs before going to work with the Critic again.
- Shaped Like Itself: "Mr Greene is surprised that an image of a killer bear is as scary as a killer bear."
- Shout-Out:
- After seeing the Critic's extreme makeover, Tamara wonders if The Cinema Snob, a well-known agnostic, had suddenly become a Buddhist.
- Seeing that a polar bear is the protagonist of the film, the Critic tries to put his spin on the "What would you do for a Klondike [ice cream] bar?" commercial from The '80s, asking viewers if they would watch Norm of the North, only to get a flat rejection.
- The Critic thinks the film is such a ripoff it's like a bad Coca-Cola commercial.
- Critic's breakdown while calling for Bill is based on a scene from Chuck Jones' 1943 short The Aristo-Cat.
- When Mr. Greene asks for a human to masquerade as a bear to attract buyers for his arctic real estate, the Critic thinks of Nicolas Cage in a bear suit from The Wicker Man (2006).
- When the Critic asks the Talent Replacer 9000 about the formula for Rob Schneider movies, the robot recites the narration from the trailer for Da Derp Dee Derp Da Teetley Derpee Derpee Dumb.
- Critic wonders if the movie could be like Split, in that it's secretly connected to another movie.
- The Talent Replacer 9000 sounds like a cross between Vicky from Small Wonder and the AWESOM-O 4000.
- Skewed Priorities: The Critic mocks the movie for tending to focus on the lemmings pissing or farting over actual character interactions.
- Take That!:
- The lemmings are compared unfavorably to the Minions, Harris, Hubert and Hamish, the various creatures from the animated adaptation of The Lorax, the four penguins from Madagascar, and Scrat.
- When the Critic claims Norm of the North is a Mockbuster on its own, he puts up pictures of other cheap knockoffs such as Tappy Feet (Happy Feet), Frozen Land (Frozen), What's Up (Up), Chop Kick Panda (Kung Fu Panda), Kiara the Brave (Brave), Ratatoing (Ratatouille), The Frog Princess (The Princess and the Frog), Tiny Robots (Robots), Escape from Planet Earth (Planet 51) and Little Bee (Bee Movie).
- When Norm talks about how humans think all animals look the same to a pack of identical-looking lemmings, the Critic feigns shock and sarcastically claims that racial sensitivity is a forte of Rob Schneider (who is notorious for exactly the opposite reasons).
- Vomit Discretion Shot: The Critic vomits in response to the film's awful dialogue.
- What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The Critic mocks the Dove Foundation giving the film an "All Ages" rating, when it got a PG rating, in response to the various scenes using Toilet Humor and implied onscreen deaths.
- Worst. Whatever. Ever!: Defied by the Critic, who doesn't consider the film to be among the worst films he's ever reviewed.