‘Leaving Normal’ stays close to the vest
By Julie Brown-Micko

Before the opening credits finish rolling, a VW minibus drives off into the sky, riding the shimmering waves of the Northern Lights. And with that, Leaving Normal joins the pantheon of flying car movies including the likes of Grease and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But whimsy, music and fun are sorely lacking in the overly serious drama about a waitress with a heart of gold and her not-so-happy gal pal.

Unlike the VW minibus, this road-trip never gets off the ground. Released hot on the heels of Thelma and Louise (another flying car movie, kind of), Leaving Normal pales in comparison to its wildly successful predecessor. In Zwick’s chick-flick, wide-eyed innocent Marianne (Meg Tilly) crosses paths with cocktail waitress Darly (Christine Lahti). Marianne is down on her luck, broke, and on the run from an abusive husband. Things are looking up for Darly, however. She’s leaving the quiet town of Normal to claim land and a house in Alaska. She takes Marianne under her wing, offering the luckless girl a ride to her sister’s house in Portland. But, as fate would have it, it’s a long, strange trip to Portland, Alaska and beyond. The two women bond over the vicissitudes of cross-country travel (car trouble, cash trouble, man trouble, etc.) even though their tempera ments run to opposite extremes. What they have in common is a penchant for poor choices and a deep desire for a safe, welcoming place to call “home.”

This sentimental movie takes itself quite seriously. Sometimes Zwick uses a sledgehammer to drive home his point. The contrast between free-spirited Marianne and her pink-clad, suburban, soccer-mom sister is cartoonishly delineated. And, when two impeccably clad, well-scrubbed, businesswomen interrogate the hitchhiking Marianne and Darly, our heroines can’t get out of the car fast enough. It’s a little too simple and patently clichéd. They’re leaving normal—we get it already.

One bright spot in the movie is Patrika Darbo in the role of “66” (yes, “66” is her name). A diner waitress who puts the “q” in quirky, her memorable character is otherworldly, wise and weird. You know the moment that you meet her that she’s destined to join Marianne and Darly on their quest. “66” gets to fire a pistol, dance in a gazebo amidst fireworks, and speak some of the best lines in the movie. As she hands Darly and Marianne the keys to her silver trailer she kindly, but matter-of-factly, states, “You’re not the best friends I’ve ever had, but you are the most recent.” If only “66” had more than 15 minutes of screen time in the middle of this overly earnest drama. Now that would be a movie I’d like to see.

Despite Meg Tilly’s winsome and whispery ways and the startlingly beautiful scenery of the West, Zwick’s film fails to gel. A champion of the unconventional, Leaving Normal is, sadly, quite conventional and as flat as a pancake at a rundown roadhouse.