After being subjected to the feature-length twerking video that is ”Norm of the North,” it doesn’t surprise me to learn that it was originally meant as a straight-to-DVD release. Possibly the undisclosed budget pushed it to the big screen, but it has no business being there.

From the second-rate animation to putting Bill Nighy in a supporting role and Rob Schneider in the lead, from the aforementioned music video pandering to its hackneyed plot, “Norm of the North” should not only have gone straight to DVD, but is barely worth a rental.

Let me start with the synopsis from IMDb: “When a real estate development invades his Arctic home, Norm and his three lemming friends head to New York City, where Norm becomes the mascot of the corporation in an attempt to bring it down from the inside and protect his homeland.”

And therein lies the biggest problem with “Norm”: it’s a PG children’s animated film that is neither funny nor entertaining…unless your child is enchanted by twerking polar bears, market research and favorability polls.

And that’s what “Norm” concentrates on: opinion referenda, marketing schemes and business strategy. That is, when it isn’t relying on every trope you’ve seen in kids’ flicks and its lemmings aren’t doling out tidbits of potty humor. Ultimately, “Norm of the North” commits the cardinal sin of children’s movies: It doesn’t entertain, which makes 90 minutes seem much longer. It’s an overly complex assemblage of other (and better) movies, a stream of inconsistent conceits and a collection of confusing speeches about saving the Arctic. Which is confusing, because our antagonist is Ken Jeong’s Mr. Greene, whose Greene technologies will actually ruin the environment. Get it? There are a lot of these puns that work against the premise of the movie — a movie that is unnecessarily overloaded.

Norm (Rob Schneider) is a polar bear who can’t hunt. Once he gets ahold of a seal, he has such empathy for it that he can’t kill it. I’m not sure what he eats that makes him so large, but no matter — that’s the least of Norm’s problems. His inability to hunt and kill not only makes him the butt of jokes from other bears, but also makes him (of course) special. That and he can dance (his “Artic Shake” might haunt you if only it was catchy enough), and he can “speak human,” which he finds out when he inadvertently communicates with a young tourist who gets too close. But that ability is what makes him the obvious choice to go to NYC to convince Mr. Greene to stop building condos in the Arctic.

When Norm finally arrives in NYC and is given (live) pufferfish to eat, he gobbles them up with no problem. His “human” is also so good none of the real humans can tell that he’s a real bear. They think he’s a guy in a suit. But then why feed him pufferfish? Meanwhile, Greene captured his grandfather years before, and Norm is also there to break him out. Except that his captured grandfather (Colm Meaney) also “speaks human” (as does virtually every other animated character other than the lemmings), and even though the real humans know his grandfather is a bear, they still think Norm is a guy in a suit even though they look alike. It has all of these inconsistencies and more…it just doesn’t have many jokes — other than the occasional poop gag from the Lemmings.

Norm’s heart may be in the right place, but the execution is so sub-par, unfunny and unentertaining, he shoulda stayed up north.

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CRITIC RATING: One star

RATING: PG. 90 minutes

BEHIND THE SCENES

Directed by: Trevor Wall

Writing Credits: Daniel Altiere, Steven Altiere, Malcolm T. Goldman

Starring (all voices only): Rob Schneider, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong, Bill Nighy, Colm Meaney

TRIVIA FROM IMDb)

• Was supposed to be directed by Anthony Bell (who previously directed Lionsgate’s hit film “Alpha and Omega”), but Trevor Wall replaced him.
• ”The North” in the film’s title geographically refers to northern Canada (the Canadian Arctic).