Chris, a young police officer meets the attractive and sexy Pamela and immediately falls in love with her. Even her drug and alcohol problems cannot affect his mad love for her and they decide to marry. As the relationship continues, more problems arise. Their passionate love is accompanied by destructive fights and Pam's emotional problems start to surface. She shows no respect for Chris’s family members who are very important to him. Pam's also manipulative and exploits Chris’s love for her, leaving him to do all the chores and making him buy her expensive things until they are on the brink of bankruptcy. Trouble escalates when Chris loses his job after trouble with a fellow officer. To finance Pam's lifestyle, Chris decides to earn a living by robbing banks. Pam's fascinated with his bank heists and begs him to tag along. After having finally robbed enough banks to afford a house of their own, Chris decides to stop a life of crime, much to Pam's chagrin. Pam soon leaves Chris who quickly finds himself unable to live without her. Chris then agrees to start robbing banks again, which proves to be fatal for the duo.
Producer Steven A. Jones read an article about Jeffrey Erickson, a suspected bank robber whose wife Jill led the Federal Bureau of Investigation on a chase through 12 different suburbs, with a machine gun hanging out of the window of her van, when they came to capture him, which led to a huge gun battle. She ended up dead, ostensibly taking her own life after she was wounded. He read another article related to the case in the New York Times, and, knowing the author of the articles, tried unsuccessfully to contact him. The rights to the story had already been purchased by someone else, but coincidentally Jones received a screenplay about the couple from the husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Peg Haller and Bob Schneider and producer Richard Maynard, and they agreed to work together. The William Morristalent agency said Luke Perry was interested in the lead role, and they also suggested Ashley Judd for the female lead. Perry was well known for the television seriesBeverly Hills, 90210 and Spelling Entertainment were willing to put up the money to make the film. The distributor New Line Cinema were optimistic about the film at first. However, test audiences were not expecting a crime drama, instead they expected a Luke Perry movie to be similar to 90210 and reacted negatively. New Line declined to release the film. After director John McNaughton complained in the press, they gave the film a limited release for a week in New York and Los Angeles, and then the film went to HBO.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 70% based on 10 reviews. James Berardinelli in his article on reelviews.net: "Luke Perry, giving the most convincing performance of his career to date, makes it clear how desperately, hopelessly smitten Chris is by his wild, troubled wife." And finally: "By depicting the sham of 'normality,' Normal Life reminds us how fictitious and unattainable the 'American dream' can be." Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 out of 4, called the film "fascinating in its portrait of criminal pathology" and praised the casting. Peter Sobczynski writes in an article titled "A Good Ashley Judd Film? Believe It or Not!": " her single greatest performance-indeed, one of the strongest bits of film acting that you are ever likely to see-was in what probably remains the most obscure and least-seen film of her career, John McNaughton's 1996 masterpiece Normal Life."
