TT: Norm of the North

(I'm going to experiment with branching out a bit. "TT" stands for "Trailer Tuesday". Each Tuesday I'm going to post a look at an upcoming trailer instead of a movie review.)

There is a new kids movie coming. Did you like Happy Feet? Madagascar? Most importantly, did you really like their cash grab sequels? Then you should see Norm of the North!

Okay, wow. I'm just going to let that sink in for a bit.

Let's go through the pros and cons I see in this trailer. On the pro side I see:

• Another message about environmentalism. It's great to get this out to kids. They might never have had a cute animal talk to them about the dangers of rampant habitat loss before. 
• The lemmings are pretty cute.

On the con side I see:

• Rob Schneider. I hate to be cruel, but he's really never been a mark of quality.
• The animation style looks like it was done on the cheap.
• The story in the trailer is super muddled. That doesn't give me much hope for a strong narrative in the film itself.
• The lemmings, while cute, seem like a terrible ripoff of the Madagascar penguins.
• Really? A fart joke AND a fat joke right in the trailer? Ow.

All in all, this is likely to be a typical January loss leader. It's primary purpose is not to sell tickets, but to sell DVDs. Hack writing, D-list actors, animation that is straight from a Facebook game all say "we slapped this together with the smallest budget possible because we know our profit margin is going to come from the very narrow but very insistent toddler market".

I'm going to be skipping this one.