Normal

Directed by Carl Bessai. Starring Carrie-Anne Moss, Callum Keith Rennie, and Kevin Zegers. Rated 18A. Opens Friday, February 8, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

The beginning of Normal is full of intriguing setups and side steps, deftly choreographed by B.C. director Carl Bessai. Viewers have to put together the puzzle of what happened to a young basketball star whose sudden death devastated his mother (played with intensity by Carrie-Anne Moss) and left scars on many others in their wide circle.

That network includes the driver who hit him, a self-loathing lit professor played by Callum Keith Rennie, and his passenger, the prof’s autistic brother (Tygh Runyan). There’s also the basketballer’s best friend (cast standout Kevin Zegers, formerly of the Air Bud series), doing soft time for stealing the car they were in.

Also having a rough time are various spouses, siblings, and, presumably, social workers, although the closest we get to that is the jailbird’s dad, a notably uncompassionate shrink (an underused Michael Riley). There’s brief respite from terminal seriousness with Benjamin Ratner as an officious fast-food manager and Lauren Lee Smith as a promiscuous TV weather reporter.

With its anguished white folks in an unspecified setting (mostly Oak Bay, outside Victoria), the movie obviously edges steadily toward Ordinary People territory, with some of Robert Altman’s fragmentary storytelling thrown in. Unfortunately, the resulting sum is much less than the considerable parts.

Most of the way in, the characters are struggling through tortured silences and futile, sometimes violent, gestures to express themselves. When they finally start talking, you wish they would go back to repressing themselves. Although the actors work hard to deliver solid emotional content, much of what they say—courtesy of screenwriter Travis McDonald, with help from the director—is hopelessly clichéd. This fatally underlines the sense that the film’s characterizations are drawn more from movies and TV shows than from real life.

Everyone here is just so busy solving or surrendering to Big Problems that they forget to convey the slightest sense of who they would be without their soapy conflicts. Sadly, they are not quite normal enough for us to care.

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