Bob Odenkirk, also known as Robert Odenkirk, has landed his latest action outing on Rotten Tomatoes with a score that places it in familiar company. The actor’s new film Normal has drawn comparisons to his previous work in the genre, with critics weighing in on how the Ben Wheatley-directed feature stacks up against his earlier hits.
How Normal’s Rotten Tomatoes score compares with Nobody and Nobody 2
Normal holds a 79% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes from 62 critics reviews. The Ben Wheatley-directed film sits above Nobody 2’s 76% score from 204 reviews but trails the original Nobody’s 83% Certified Fresh rating from 288 reviews.
Normal does not yet have an audience Popcornmeter score. Nobody holds a 94% Popcornmeter score from over 2,500 verified ratings. Nobody 2 carries an 88% Certified Fresh audience score from over 1,000 verified ratings.
What Normal reviews are saying
Critics have praised Bob Odenkirk’s performance as Sheriff Ulysses across multiple reviews. Justin Clark of Slant Magazine wrote that Odenkirk is “doubling down on the volatility of his performance in Nobody, flits back and forth between taciturn badass and genuinely kind-hearted bear in the blink of an eye.”
Randy Myers of San Jose Mercury News described Normal as “a nonstop neo-Western action film as Ulysses, played with the right amount of drollness by Odenkirk, goes out on a call about a bank robbery that turns into something bigger.” Peter Debruge of Variety wrote that “Kolstad’s script may be a recipe for carnage, but it takes a kitchen master like Wheatley to turn that into such a deliciously excessive spread.”
Not every critic responded positively. Jacob Oller of AV Club gave the film a C- grade, writing that “neither the bit nor the bloodbath tap into any of the chaotic juvenilia that’s made Wheatley’s gonzo genre romps stand out.” Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com wrote that “there are a lot of booms and bangs in Normal, but it’s all woefully underlit and much of it is poorly edited too.” Tim Grierson of Screen International wrote that the “shoot-’em-up mostly fires blanks.”
