In Normal, several characters cope with the aftermath of a fatal car accident.

That they're not coping well is illustrated through wooden acting and cringe-worthy sex scenes and sometimes both at once.

Carrie-Anne Moss stars as a woman unhinged by the death of her teenage son. She is devastated by the loss of this boy, and neither her husband nor her other son (Cameron Bright) can help with her grief.

Callum Keith Rennie co-stars as a philandering university professor with a drinks-and-coeds habit. He's involved in the same car accident that killed the teenage boy, but we're not sure how.

He has an autistic brother (Tygh Runyan) to care for and his wife's just left him; it's not a pretty package.

Then there's Kevin Zegers, a young man being released from some kind of minimum security facility. He too is involved with the fatal accident, but now that his punishment is over, he goes home to his angry father and his sexy young stepmother. His future looks bleak. His father tells him he has to find work, and so he begins a job at a pizza place. He also begins an affair with his stepmother. Maybe she likes pizza?

So here we have Carrie-Anne Moss smelling her son's shirt and sobbing, Callum Keith Rennie offering a pretty student an extension (nudge-nudge) and an angry Kevin Zegers getting fired from his pizza job.

Each of these pathetic characters has to come to terms with any involvement in the accident, face his or her demons, ask for forgiveness and move on.

Why this takes 100 minutes remains a mystery.

As the story winds itself into a big finish, Moss' character has a breakthrough and trashes her kitchen, a scene most women will love.

Then she beats the crap out of one of the people involved in her son's fatal car accident. This too was fun to watch, but confusing.

It's actually kind of depressing to watch good actors wasted in this fashion.

Despite being tied together by the accident, the characters in Normal never really connect.

Their psychological isolation is one thing, but this meandering-and-going-nowhere story is quite another.

The individual dramas get stuck together at the end, but you never feel as if you're in the middle of something developing as it should -- like a coherent story.

With Normal, you never forget that you're watching a movie.

That's not a good sign.

(This film is rated 18-A)
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