Rating: *** [3 out of 5 stars]
Napoleon Dynamite was something of a sleeper hit in the States -- it opened there back in June and, as of October, was still clinging to the box office top 15. It remains to be seen whether it will do quite so well over here, but it's an enjoyable, offbeat film that doesn't rely on the usual teen movie jokes involving sex, drugs, and swearing, largely because writer-director Jared Hess and his wife, co-writer Jerusha Hess graduated from Brigham Young University film school and their Mormon faith prohibited such material.
Middle Of Nowhere
The film is set in Preston, Idaho (i.e. the middle of freaking nowhere). Jon Seda plays Napoleon Dynamite, a tall, gawky, mouth-breathing type with thick glasses and a flame red afro hair-do. He possesses little or no social skills and treats everyone with a sort of stroppy exasperation.
Napoleon lives with his even weirder family, including his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who spends all his time in chat rooms looking for love ("Don't be jealous just because I've been talking to hot babes all day") and his quad-bike riding grandmother, whose temporary absence allows creepy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) to move in, a herbal bust-enhancement salesman obsessed with recapturing his high school glory days as a football player.
There isn't much of a plot to speak of -- Napoleon befriends Pedro (Efrem Ramirez) by default and decides to help manage his campaign to become class president. He also has a love interest of sorts in the shape of his friend Deb (Tina Majorino -- the moppet from Waterworld, all growed up), only his lady-killing skills only extend to a cut-in dance at the high school prom and a game of tetherball.
Wealth Of Little Details
The humour in Napoleon Dynamite doesn't come from characters being witty or knowing -- we're mostly laughing at them rather than with them. Napoleon himself isn't even all that likeable; he's a long way from the cliche of the lonely nerd who just wants to be loved or the supercool archness of Ghost World's Enid. Mostly he's content just to sit around drawing ligers (don't ask) or practising "sweet jumps" on Pedro's bike without injuring himself in the testicles. However, like the film, Napoleon gradually wins you over and there's a terrific pay-off in which Napoleon demonstrates that he really does have "sweet skillz" after all.
There's a lot to enjoy here, particularly in the wealth of little details (the inventive credit sequence; the bizarre costumes and hair-dos) and off-the-wall moments such as Kip and Napoleon's "Rex Kwan-do" class. There are also some quality slapstick moments that are up there with the similar gags in Dodgeball. It's also extremely well acted, particularly by Jon Seda and has a touching, understated final scene.
In short, Napoleon Dynamite is not your typical Hollywood teen flick -- instead it's an enjoyably off-kilter comedy that has no use for the usual cliches. It's also worth staying until after the credits, because there's an additional four minute scene that was added after the film became a hit in the States. Recommended.
Grade: A-
"Napoleon Dynamite" is a film about teenagers, and it is a comedy, but to call it a "teen comedy" would be to mistakenly place this persistently hysterical movie about southern Idaho misfits next to other "teen comedies," many of which have also come out in the summer months. Though it is summer, and though this film is, generally speaking, a "teen comedy," no bodily fluids are erroneously consumed. No virgins are deflowered. No cheerleaders are disrobed.
Lacking any of these genre staples, we're forced to look elsewhere for entertainment. Newcomer Jon Heder -- a former animation student at Brigham
Young University, where he met "Napoleon"'s 24-year-old director, Jared Hess -- is the leader of a perfectly calibrated ensemble of unknowns (the biggest star is likely Jon Gries, possibly best known for his role as the enigmatic Lazlo Hollyfeld in the 1986 sub-cult "Real Genius"). Heder plays the titular outcast, a perfect teenager in the sense that he is simultaneously wretched and endearing in the way that teenagers so often are: angry, anxious, hostile, loyal.
He lives with his equally awkward brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who surfs the Internet looking for romance, and his atypically spry grandmother (Sandy Martin). After Grandma is injured while riding her ATV across a sand dune, Napoleon's Uncle Rico (Gries) moves in to mind the boys. If Bruce Springsteen grew up in Preston, Idaho, he might have written about Uncle Rico, a former high school athlete still pining for the big game. And Uncle Rico didn't even play in the big game; he just sat on the bench and waited for the call. It is little wonder that Uncle Rico hopes to make a future for himself selling herbal breast enhancers door to door.
Uncle Rico's arrival might be the gentle catalyst that prods the movie into motion, or it might be Napoleon's best friend Pedro's decision to run for president of the student council against a prototypical Mean Girl -- played by Hilary Duff's sister Haylie, no less. Or it might be Napoleon's exceedingly hesitant courtship of his classmate Deb (Tina Majorino), with a sideways ponytail and a preciously grave demeanor.
But the plot is beside the point, and "Napoleon" is at its best when viewed as a collection of very funny moments, and of precisely chosen details, like a scene involving a cow and a bus of schoolchildren, or Napoleon's artistic productions, which include his pencil drawing a of "liger." There is less a plot than there is an ambience, an atmosphere of geniality, for as much as "Napoleon" is not "American Pie," neither is it "Thirteen."
It benefits from a prevailing gentleness that seems not entirely unrelated to the fact that both the director, his co-writer wife, and his star are Mormons. It's in no way a proselytizing film -- it's hard to recall the word "Mormon" even being uttered -- but it mines an unmistakably unique sensibility. Made on location in the dairy farm-centric Preston, it's that rare independent that actually feels independent, the product of a singular narrative aesthetic. It builds its own world, sticks to its own rules, and only infrequently nods to life outside its borders, as when Kip's Internet girlfriend improbably arrives on the bus.
In this world, Napoleon is the only possible hero, a hero because of his very non-hero-ness and his general ineptitude. But he does triumph, personally and artisitically, despite his surety that girls only like boys with "nun-chuck skills, bow-hunting skills, (and) computer hacking skills." Napoleon's own skills are scarce, but they set up a finale that's legitimately rousing, a triumph that lacks any of the elements usually associated with a teenager's triumph, including that false gravity -- the sense that a field goal at the end of the state championship, or some other copy-and-paste plot device, is somehow a metaphor for the human condition.
In the right hands, it can be. But it is so often not in the right hands. Napoleon's triumph is both small and grand. It is just Napoleon being Napoleon, and happily, in this careful gem of a movie, that's all that's needed.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
Cinema loves the uber nerd, the high school kid who doesn't fit in and wouldn't begin to know how. On screen, the nerd is a walking visual gag, a source of mirth even before he opens his mouth.
The latest in the line of these beloved losers is the title character in young Jared Hess' amusing, low-budget, smartly shot indie debut, "Napoleon Dynamite."
Set in the wide-open, underfunded regions of Preston, Idaho, "Napoleon" is a portrait of a geek that is, to borrow from the title character, "sweet" if a bit lacking in narrative muscle. Played by Jon Heder, Napoleon is anything but the dynamite character his name implies. This Napoleon is a loose-limbed, curly haired, bespectacled spazz who breathes through his mouth and has no idea how uncool he is. At school, he is a punching bag for a few of the school toughs. He knows it and does not even bother to fight back.
Left to his own devices, he plays solitary games of tetherball, shops consignment, feeds the pet llama his grandmother keeps in the backyard, and argues with his older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), a thirtysomething who lives at home and centers his days around scheduled Internet chat-room appointments.
Aside from the sight of Napoleon, the bulk of the humor in Hess' film is derived from watching Heder act the part of an unapologetic geek and spew forth the language of the average school jock who sees everything as "sweet" and "awesome, dude."
Hess' story, co-written by his wife Jerusha Hess, moves about as fast as Napoleon's tetherball game and this is mostly a good thing. In place of things happening, the 24-year-old director and his collaborators evoke a sense of time standing still in the middle of nowhere. There are shots of Napoleon riding a bicycle against the barren expanse of sky or spinning his tetherball round and round and swatting at it. Plot points do arise but none approaches a focusing narrative line. At home, Napoleon's grandmother is hospitalized after she cracks her tailbone in a motorcycle accident and opportunistic Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) arrives to look after his nephews. At school, a new kid, another nerd called Pedro (Efren Ramirez), arrives and Napoleon makes a friend.
Hess' affection for small town personalities and quirks is always more compelling than the demands of narrative. Napoleon's enterprising schoolmate Deb (Tina Majorino) sells homemade key chains and sundries door-to-door and takes photo portraits of anyone willing to pay. Uncle Rico is obsessed with the year 1982 and his glory days as a football star. Propping a video camera on a tripod outside his van, he videotapes himself making stellar plays.
But if the ranginess of the setting and the oddball nature of the characters is a considerable part of the film's charm, the downside comes in stretches of the film when nothing much is happening and the characters are reduced to curiosities rather than sympathetic souls. The story, such as it is, culminates in Napoleon's attempts to help Pedro become class president in a race against the blond cheerleader Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff). But the election plot twist and its predictable outcome feel tacked on to give the film a certain payoff, and they rob the film of the originality and eccentricity that give it character.
Hess is a promising young filmmaker with a great eye and an original sensibility. With a few more lessons in screenwriting, he could become a dynamite one.
Rating: * [1 out of 4 stars]
A first feature, apparently inspired by Mr. Hess's 9-minute short "Peluca. " Hess (now about 25) was born in Preston, Idaho --pop. under 5,000,--attended the film program at Utah's Brigham Young University (where he met his wife-to-be Jerusha,) and later worked in a few films as assistant cameraman and such jobs.
"Napoleon Dynamite" was shot in Preston. It centers on (and around) Napoleon, whose name and surname remain inexplicable. (Mr. Hess says that he once encountered in Chicago an old Italian so named). Hmm!
Napoleon is, in various ways, a nerd, a geek, an inarticulate freak in too large eyeglasses -- you name it. He lives with his older brother Kip and their grandma. Kip, 31, is glued to internet chat-rooms, in search of a female soulmate. When Grandma gets injured when riding a dune buggy (sic!), Uncle Rico shows up. His current profession is the (fruitless) door to door sale of plastic containers and, as later revealed, a breast-expanding product.
Napoleon is not exactly popular with his schoolmates. Still, he somehow forms a vague and un-dangerous liaison with timid student Deb who takes photographs of people (why, I cannot remember,) gets a side-job of selling (awkwardly and door to door) cheap key-chains (or something of the sort) and has fits in the process.
Then we get new student Pedro, a caricature of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. I forget whether or not Pedro speaks English beyond its rudiments. Anyway, after Napoleon mistakes him for a janitor, the two fellows become friends in odd and inarticulate ways. Then Napoleon, very oddly campaigns for Pedro to become class President.
And on and on and more on, or is it "moron?" The movie keeps getting overcome by senselessness and nastiness. It spares nobody. Not even local chicken growers who hire Napoleon. In fact, there is a merciless sequence of chickens so horribly, densily packed in wire cages that the SPCA could use it ina protest.
There's no visible structure to this movie. Many years ago, after a discussion of an unorthodox picture by Jean-Luc Godard, a protesting spectator asked: "But, Monsieur Godard, don't you think that a film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end?", the filmmaker replied: "Of course it should -- but not necessarily in that order!" Bu then Godard is Godard, and director Hess is... well, we'll have to wait for his subsequent opus-es. Who knows? Jared Hess may become as famous as Rudolph Hess some day.
One relatively positive aspect of the movie is its deglamorization of its people. No sexy people, no beauties, no charmers. But then the film goes overboard in the opposite direction. It is misanthropic. It is suffocating in several ways, and this within its use of open spaces. In fact, Preston looks so claustrophobic that it makes infinitely smaller towns in old western flicks look big. Very peculiar. I wonder how my Idaho relatives will react. (And, by the way, contrary to a couple of reviews I saw, Idaho is NOT in the Midwest!)
The movie does produce some laughs in its audience, but they are mere like Band-Aids on a victim of terrorism. What is extremely odd is the number of high grades given by many (and smart) film critics -- while others rate it most negatively.
A few hours after screening this picture I saw again the almost splendid and almost 20-year-old "school movie" "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Enough said.
Rating: ** [2 out of 4 stars]
Blackout routines performed by people who act as if they're on the verge of blacking out. That's the comic mechanism of Napoleon Dynamite, a deadpan farce named for a sour, gangly, bespectacled high-school misfit (Jon Heder) who lives with his endlessly computer-chatting thirtysomething brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) and their salty grandmother (Sandy Martin) in the small town of Preston, Idaho.
Random acts of unkindness mingle with bungled acts of generosity as Napoleon, a fantasist by nature and a rebel by default, eventually joins forces with good-hearted Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the one Mexican in school, and nice-girl Deb (Tina Majorino), who snaps "glamour shots" at a mall store. Together they wrest control of Preston High from the likes of blond, cheerful in-crowd types like Summer (Hayley Duff).
Despite its surface eccentricity, the movie divides along normal teen-flick lines - the insiders are superficial no-goodniks, the outsiders have heart. When Summer runs against Pedro for student-body president, she proves her badness when she says she doesn't want chimichangas served in the cafeteria.
Director Jared Hess depicts Preston as a white-bread suburbia plopped down in a redneck rural landscape. A rancher can shoot a cow without compunction in front of a packed school bus; a chicken farmer pays helpers with loose change and raw-egg juice. And the movie develops a lower-depths teen humor that proves infectious in a semi-degrading way.
The laughs come from embarrassment, the comic momentum from how much more embarrassing life always gets for Napoleon, especially after his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) enters the picture. Fixated on 1982, the year he's convinced Preston could have won a state football championship if only the coach had deployed him properly, Rico engages Kip in door-to-door sales schemes. Napoleon resists, but that doesn't save him from shame when Rico peddles herbal bust enhancers.
What's distinctive about Napoleon Dynamite is that Napoleon himself never plays nice or cops to his own geekhood, even when he's asking babes to join him in games of tetherball. And his friends typically give him bad advice, as when Pedro recommends that he woo a popular girl by drawing her portrait. (When her mom makes her go out with Napoleon, she ends up dumping him at the dance.)
But attitude and a rough, staccato style alone do not a movie make. At the end of Napoleon Dynamite, you're glad the geeks have their day (even Kip's chat-mate turns out be a winner); you're also relieved to be rid of them.
Grade: A
"There are all different kinds of nerds, and this is just one of them," said actor John Heder of his character at the FilmFest DC screening of the off-beat high school comedy, "Napoleon Dynamite." True enough, it's Napoleon's particular, pathetic breed of nerd that inspires us to laugh at him and his environment without feeling too badly about it. "Napoleon Dynamite" is one of the best movies of this year and one of the funniest teen comedies in over a decade.
With the exception of 1999's "10 Things I Hate About You" and "American Pie" and 1995's "Clueless," there haven't been any good high-school genre comedies since the heyday of the 1980s. Especially ones featuring lovable losers. But even when grouped with the 80s crowd, Napoleon stands alone. His moon boots pale against Duckie's shoes. He's no "Breakfast Club" brain. No hot car, no emerging Lane Myer sporting skills, no money stashed to afford his dream date. He doodles, akin to Hoops McCan, but who's going to be impressed by unicorns? He can actually ... dance ... per se, but would have probably been laughed out of the "Footloose" prom.
There's no overarching story to "Napoleon Dynamite." This is a day-in-the-life presentation, much like "Ferris Beuller's Day Off" except without the ambition, cunning, great locations, friends, or style. Napoleon wouldn't bother pursuing the hottest girl in the school even if he thought he could get her. There's no bully to outwit and not much in the way of a Big Competition. But the movie is far from dull.
Napoleon's challenges are manifested in the people ("Idiots!") that surround him. Napoleon lives with his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell, in his first role) in their grandmother's house. Both are tall, lanky, with a hang-dog gleam in their eyes and on-the-edge-of-boredom speech patterns. Droopy Dog in human form. Kip, all of about 130 pounds, is planning for a career as a cage fighter. The two take up a free lesson of tae kwon do, but no amount of training would turn either of these guys into anything but alley meat.
When the fighter thing doesn't work out for Kip, he joins up with their visiting Uncle Rico (Jon Gries, who played the great supernerd Lazlo Hollyfeld in 1985's "Real Genius"). Rico can't break with the past, constantly talking up his glory days as a high school star quarterback. Napoleon finds him annoying, but Rico enlists Kip to help sell Tupperware and other products door to door, chiding Napoleon for his lack of financial foresight. Not exactly a "Risky Business," enterprise.
Napoleon does find a peer in Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the new kid in school, a heavily bouffonted latino who seems even more on the verge of dozing off than Napoleon. For the approaching school dance, Pedro decides to ask out his object of affection by making her a cake. Napoleon follows suit, attempting to impress Deb (Tina Majorino, who appeared in "Waterworld"), a nerd of the girl kind and really just the most convenient choice for Napoleon, with a sketched portrait. "It's pretty much the best thing I've ever done" he says of his work. It's tragically hideous. But Deb reluctantly accepts, and Napoleon decks himself out in the worst brown three-piece 1970s leftover in town. It's one of many of his behaviors considered genius by him and ridiculously funny to us.
As an additional afterthought, Pedro puts his name on the ballot for class president. Napoleon agrees to promote Pedro's campaign and be his bodyguard, because Napoleon has skills and stuff. This results in the funniest moment of the film, when Napoleon spices up Pedro's dry campaign speech with a spontaneous solo dance routine in front of the whole school. Nobody moves like Napoleon, believe me.
An additional humorous part of the movie other than the characters is the setting itself. At first glance, it appears that writer-director Jared Hess chose to set the story in the early 1980s, enhanced by the film's low-budget look. The clothes, the houses, the ancient VCR, Napoleon's moon boots, are all vintage. Kip and Rico buy a time machine that looks like an elementary schooler's mockup of the flux capacitor. But clues here and there lead the audience to realize that the town of Preston, Idaho and its inhabitants are simply on a slower timeline than everyone else. Kip flirts via computer with a girl "in cyberspace". The school dance features Alphaville's 1984 song "Forever Young," but Napoleon later moves to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat" (itself based on a disco beat that wouldn't have been so out of place in the early 80s.)
A Preston native, Jared Hess came up with the concept of "Napoleon Dynamite" while at Brigham Young University. The title character's name comes from a real individual that Hess happened to meet. This is his first feature. It must have been a challenge to describe the story and character to others before shooting, and a risk to pull off correctly. Whatever Hess envisioned for Napoleon, school friend Heder brought to life brilliantly. His nerd is an honest lens on the embarrassment most of us probably were but refused to acknowledge during high school. The rest of the cast does an equally excellent job of keeping the subdued humor working throughout the movie. When I saw the film, the young Idaho natives sitting next to me were there for their second viewing and said that the humor and tone was right on, beaming with pride over the depiction of Idaho life as the butt of the joke.
"Napoleon Dynamite" was released in selected cities on June 11 and is expanding slowly. Check the well done website for pictures and audio from the movie, and for showtimes near you. This is a very funny movie that deserves your visit to the theater. Go and enjoy - I certainly did.
Rating: 10 out of 10
From the opening sequence of the film, you know that Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is something special. A film that will one day enjoy the benefits of being a cult classic or even better yet, one of the better movies of the year. You see, in those opening segments of the film, you realize you are about to see something along the lines of the great films of the last ten years. Yes, dust off the spot on the top shelf, because here comes Napolean Dynamite.
The film is simple in scope, showing the life of Napoleon Dynamite who could easily represent the everyday nerd. His signature, "sweet" makes you laugh, and the way he talks without making eye contact only serves to let you know he's not as confident as he sounds. He is the loner in the school, more by social standing than by choice, and it is outside of this circle that Napoleon entertains us. When a transfer student comes to the school who speaks very little English, Napoleon has finally found a friend. Together they talk about their dreams, and to put it in Napoleon's words, "have each other's backs."
Nevertheless, let me let you in on a little secret. Napoleon Dynamite might be the star of the film, but his family comes in at a close second. His older brother Kip (acted by Aaron Ruell -- think an even nerdier version of Napoleon) stills lives at home, and has a chat relationship with the girl of his dreams. Napoleon has an Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) that still lives in the past about his football career (much like Al Bundy of Married with Children fame), and his grandmother might be the toughest of the bunch. These wacky characters only serve to let you know the environment Napoleon Dynamite has come from.
The story revves up when Napoleon Dynamite tries to help his newfound friend become school president. In his battle for the presidency, Pedro (Efren Ramirez) must take on the most popular girl in the school. Will he and Napoleon be able to battle against popularity?
I enjoyed this film from beginning to end, and can completely understand why many people have touted this film as one of the best from its showing at the Sundance Film Festival. Napoleon Dynamite captures the spirit of the times, and his quirkiness makes you like him. He is the consummate underdog and you cannot help but cheer him on. This is definitely a must see.
This low-budget, loopy comedy from MTV Films seems intentionally designed to alienate the straights, especially mainstream movie critics who choose not to get it (hello, Roger Ebert), yet it has already acquired a fervent cult following that will doubtless parrot the movie's nutty dialogue for years to come.
Director Jared Hess, who co-wrote the original script with his wife Jerusha, fields perhaps the most bizarre dysfunctional family since What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Personality-challenged brothers Napoleon (Jon Heder) and Kip (Aaron Ruell) mark time in an Idaho suburb, with Napoleon a high-school geek of daunting proportions and 32-year-old Kip not that far off the mark as a shut-in cretin who carries on a long-distance e-mail romance with an unseen cutie. When Grandma (Sandy Martin) gets disabled after a dune-buggy accident, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) comes calling to baby-sit. Unfortunately, Rico is a sleazy salesguy of Tupperware-esque products who's still stuck in his glory days as a 1982-vintage jock ("If the coach put me in the fourth quarter," he endlessly recalls of his high-school career, "we'd have been state champions.") and his presence only serves to ratchet familial tensions in the Dynamite household.
Hess conjures a surreal world that likely won't be appreciated by the Idaho chamber of commerce, with bizarre sequences of local color entailing a chicken farm and a milk-tasting contest. (Flies are always aurally buzzing on the soundtrack, an example of this comedy's tongue-in-cheek condescension.) And things get even stranger when Napoleon's lone pal Pedro (Efren Ramirez) runs for class president against a popular blonde student (Haylie Duff, Hilary's older sis). Also on the fringes are Napoleon's sort-of gal pal Deb (Tina Majorino, from Waterworld and Corinna, Corinna), adept at glamour photography and boondoggle chains, and The Drew Carey Show's Diedrich Bader as a dopey dojo.
A hit at last winter's Sundance Film Festival, Napoleon Dynamite is currently hitting multiplexes in an expanded version, thanks to a five-minute epilogue following the end credits that concerns the nuptials of a central character. Hess filmed the new sequence after Napoleon's initial opening in early June; while it's amusing enough to warrant sticking through the identities of the best boy and key grip, the segment also feels tacked-on and superfluous.
Yet Heder's un-dynamic characterization is really something to see: Imagine the love child of Beavis and Butt-head and you're halfway home. Heder's Napoleon occupies his own privately quirky universe, delineating a nerdism so exactingly intense that at times he appears on the verge of implosion, especially in visual scenes devoted to interpretive dance and tetherball, as well as ferocious dialogue aimed at those who always body-slam him against the lockers: "Why don't you get out of my life and shut up!" At times recalling the dementia of early John Waters features, Napoleon Dynamite mines a deadpan uniqueness from its distinct dweebdom.
High school isn't easy for anyone. But it's hell for Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), main mover in the movie of the same name and underdog to his own worst demons. Even the bullies who routinely punch him at Preston High, a deadwood school at the ass end of Idaho, do it halfheartedly, as if they are simply fulfilling an unpleasant chore that someone else initiated.
He doesn't help himself, exactly. An ill-dressed beanpole with a shock of red-blond curls, aviator glasses, and the perpetually open mouth of a stunned trout, Napoleon is more likely to call the biggest jock "a freakin' idiot" than to say something nice to a girl. This makes it doubly difficult when it comes to asking someone to the prom. ("Damn! I don't have any skills.") But you start to understand when you (briefly) meet Napoleon's chain-smoking, foul-mouthed grandmother (Sandy Martin) and his meek older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), a black-socked nobody whose walrus mustache makes him look like a 12-year-old pretending to be grown up.
Napoleon's lame role model is his Uncle Rico, played by cast standout Jon Gries, unrecognizable from his usual bald-loser roles (Jackpot, The Snow Walker). Rico, a grease-ball scam artist still living in his high-school-football glory years, wishes it were still 1982, although there's little on the scene in Preston to tell newcomers it isn't. Anyway, his plan to sell Tupperware door-to-door does get Napoleon out of the house, and Rico is able to meet some lonely housewives.
Napoleon Dynamite is so low-budget, its biggest name is Tina Majorino, most widely seen in Andre, the talking-seal movie. She plays the timid girl who seems to like our nerdy hero, at least a little. Also featured are Efren Ramirez, as the only kid doofus enough to hang out with him, Haylie Duff (Hilary's slightly older sister) as the local bitch queen, and Diedrich Bader, a macho moron who hawks his own brand of "Rex Kwon Do" in TV ads.
The filmmakers, all in their early or mid-20s and mostly veterans, like writer-director Jared Hess, of Brigham Young University's film school, have taken a page from the twisted realism of Wes Anderson and Terry Zwigoff. The people here are not exactly lovable or smart, yet the movie and its characters have a certain bittersweet originality to them. By the time Napoleon improvises his idea of hip-hop dancing for a school assembly, you will find yourself shouting "Sweet!" at his antics. My favourite thing about this offbeat venture, though, is that no one seems to notice the weirdness of our hero's name.
From out of the west - specifically the small town of Preston, Idaho - comes a charming little film that could be the sleeper hit of the summer. It's called "Napoleon Dynamite," which is the name of its leading character, a gangly, uncoordinated, mouth-breathing high-school nerd who spends much of his school time being slammed against his locker by the jocks, plays tetherball by himself in P.E., and is saddled with the most disfunctional family in ages. But don't feel sorry for him; he is resilient, has only contempt for his abusers, and is unruffled by his many setbacks. He is played - inhabited, really - with astounding virtuosity by Jon Heder, an actor whose only previous work was as the lead in a short film by "Napoleon Dynamite"s director Jared Hess.
Hess and his wife Jerusha have written a high-school comedy that owes little or nothing to the genre; it's like a comic version of Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse." Napoleon lives with his grandmother and his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who spends his days in chatrooms on the internet, looking for the perfect mate. But when his grandmother is injured in a dune buggy accident their uncle Rico (Jon Gries) comes to live with them. Rico is a piece of work; he drives an ancient camper-van and sells plastic kitchenware door to door, which in Preston means going miles between customers; but he lives in the memory of 1982, when he quarterbacked Preston High nearly to the state championship. He even buys a time machine on the internet so that he can go back and try to undo the mistakes he made before the coach took him out of the game.
Napoleon, who has never in his life initiated a conversation with a girl, somehow finds a friend in Deb (Tina Majorino), a classmate who takes studio photographs and also sells her own hand-made key chains. His only other friend is the school's one Latino student, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), whom he persuades to run for student body president against the most popular girl in school. How the campaign turns out, and how Napoleon, the gorky dork, contributes to it by turning into a swan for a moment, is the delicious resolution of the film.
This is a film of moments, all well conceived, directed and acted: the Hesses have written a dozen or more perceptive and witty sequences, Jared as director knows when to cut and when to let a scene go on, and none of his actors ever relax their control over their characters. Whenever we're led to expect something, Hess gives us something better, as when Kip's search for a soul mate is rewarded in a way that's only barely tipped off in advance; or the way in which Napoleon salvages Pedro's campaign.
This is a first film, made on what was obviously a minuscule budget, with actors willing to take a great chance on a new director; and the delight of the film is that it works, that it will help their careers, and that it gives us in the audience a nice summer jolt. You can't ask for much more than that.
Rating: * [1 out of 5]
Watching this movie, I could not help but be reminded of the low budget indie films that dominated the early and mid-nineties, Welcome to the Dollhouse especially. The style is sparse, and the fact that the filmmakers did not have a lot of money is part of the film's charm. Unfortunately, that is where the similarities end. Napoleon Dynamite quickly reveals itself to be the one joke horse that it is, and the laughs are few and far between.
The one joke, of course, is that title character Napoleon (Heder) is anything but dynamite. He is the biggest dork in school, the laughing stock of classmates who body check him into the lockers at any opportunity. In his cheap, no-one-ever-wore-that clothing and out-of-season snow boots, Napoleon is an easy target. The humor comes in watching him be a geek, humor that the film pretends not to be aware of, and it grows quickly tiresome. Worse, Napoleon is not a likeable character, and the film makes no effort to make him so, so when the initial humor wears off, we really don't care what happens to him.
Filling in Napoleon's world is his brother Kip, a 35-year-old unemployed nerd who spends every waking moment cruising Internet chat rooms. There is Pedro Sanchez, the new kid in school, and the only Latino, who Napoleon is somehow able to make friends with. Deb is the apple of Napoleon's eye, the girl he likes but cannot connect with. His efforts lead Deb to inadvertently go to the prom with Pedro, and when Napoleon's own date (who was forced by her mother to go with him in the first place) ditches him, Napoleon's prom experience is quickly reduced to cutting in. I wasn't sure if the filmmakers wanted us to laugh at Napoleon here or feel sorry for him, but it does not matter. By this point we really don't care what happens to him.
The other person in Napoleon's life is Uncle Rico (Gries). When Napoleon's grandmother finds herself laid up after a dune buggy accident, Uncle Rico steps in to look after the two boys. Not much is made of Grandma and the dune buggy; it is an aside to open the door for Uncle Rico, the door-to-door salesman whose head is stuck in the 1982 high school football season and what might have been. Like Napoleon, Uncle Rico is not a likeable character, and he gets boring quickly.
The film ultimately isn't about anything. It is as though someone had a vision of this super geek and put him in a movie without there being much a movie built up around him. There is nothing compelling here. Napoleon would have been better off as comic relief in another movie; small doses. There is little to like about this film, and the laughs quickly run dry.
Rating: **** [4 out of 4 stars]
Do the chickens have very large talons?" Napoleon asks a farmer.
"Boy, I don't understand a word you're saying." The farmer responds.
The title character of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is misunderstood often, but occasionally he is heard loud and clear. When the moment of clarity arrives, you aren't sure whether to cheer or feel bad because you ignored or ridiculed a fellow student like Napoleon when you were younger. Napoleon's uncle Rico in the film (played perfectly by Jon Gries) describes Napoleon as a tender soul who still wets the bed at night. He probably doesn't wet the bed, but Napoleon is clearly a tender soul and while NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is a wonderful comedy, it is also a tender story.
The story is about a weird kid named Napoleon Dynamite who lives in a small mid-western town with his grandmother and older brother. Both boys are odd; the brother is an effeminate heterosexual who lives in online chat rooms and Napoleon is, well, a kid named Napoleon might be a little different from birth. Napoleon's grandmother is played by the hip grandmotherly actress Sandy Martin (buried this actress' filmography is a cool sounding rated X film entitled 2076 OLYMPIAD).
One day, grandma is hospitalized after having an accident while driving her dune-buggy in the desert. This leaves the boys in the care of their older uncle Rico who is an amiable loser still living in the past when he played high school football. Uncle Rico is a man who honestly admits that he wishes he could go back in time to 1982 and finish the last quarter in a football game; it's subtly touching and, in a tiny strange film like this one, true blue.
When I saw this film at a screening at Sundance my hopes were high that director Jared Hess could build on the offbeat comic tone set forth in the short film upon which this feature was based. The short film, PELUCA, played at Slamdance in 2003 and was special, like nothing I had seen before. I still have the fanny pack the director handed me before the screening in which were placed the press materials for the short film. After the screening, Mr. Hess was so happy folks liked the short he could not contain himself smiling humbly when we clapped. Luckily, he found the funds to expand on his premise and the result was one of the best narrative feature films of Sundance 2004.
Building on the short film Co-Writer/Director Hess (his wife wrote the feature with the director) brings back the hilarious central character played by Jon Heder. In NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, the new feature length film, Heder's character is given the name Napoleon; however, in the short Heder's character's name was Seth, although the two appear to be one and the same, with Napoleon being a great upgrade in name category. Also, returning is the character of Pedro but this time the role is played by Efren Ramirez. Pedro is a new kid at school who Napoleon gravitates toward. Pedro's innocence matches Napoleon's and both boys, from extremely different backgrounds, have in common their odd view of the world and desire to pass this view onto others.
Napoleon's uncle Rico is a ridiculously quirky character played delightfully by Jon Greis who must be one of the most underrated character actors working today. His role in last year's hardly or never released THE BIG EMPTY was one of the highlights of that film and I remember first seeing him in REAL GENIUS, one of my favorite movies. At times, you understand exactly how Rico feels partly because the dialogue is clever but above all because Gries can sell an otherwise unbelievable character with affecting facial expressions and odd body language which are unique in every character he inhabits. The fact that Gries can make these traits fresh each time is a testament to his screen presence.
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is a whole lot of good clean fun which could have garnered it a possible "G" rating. It is suitable viewing for ages 12 to 42 (perhaps even older if one can give in to the comic goofiness of the story). It plays like the best romantic teen comedies of the 1980's with the genuine depth associated with certain moments in GHOST WORLD. At Sundance 2004, the buzz was about GARDEN STATE which had the look and feel of a top notch Hollywood production. By contrast, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE has no typical trappings.
I was surprised when talking with critics at Sundance that one critic, who claimed to not be a child of the 1980s, could not get into the film citing the music and 80s references. Of course, this was his opinion but I think it is a minority one. You don't have to be familiar with the clever references to be moved when Napoleon takes the stage to dance imparting his funky moves on us. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is engaging and touching right to the very end when tether ball in the school yard has never taken on such a genuinely sweet meaning.
If you turn down your cynical side, you might just understand the connection that Napoleon makes when the film concludes. I think that it's called growing up and few films understand and appreciate the kinds of things young people everywhere experience when maturity begins to creep in. I guess the folk writing romantic teen comedies these days are often so out of touch with what it is to be a teen that it is impossible for a sincere take to be presented in an entertaining fashion. This is the same problem that plagues the new twenty-something genre that is so over-sexed and drug laden that one wonders how young people in America today survive.
In Napoleon's world some chickens do have large talons, and with Napoleon's help, we may be fortunate enough to see them.
I keep hearing over and over again how Deliverance isn't really against the Appalachian back-woods folks it depicts, and how honest a depiction it is, and how it's an appeal for understanding, etcetera, etcetera. I think this is bunk- not because Deliverance is inaccurate, but because of the spin it puts on what it's accurate about. Nobody comes out of that movie identifying with its famous antagonists; the words "squeal like a pig" are now synonymous with unpleasant emasculation, because the filmmakers couldn't adopt the point of view of the people it was so sharp in defining. So it is with Napoleon Dynamite. Though it's gruesomely accurate in defining a stage in some people's development that they'd really rather forget, it objectifies them as freaks instead of locking in to their perspective and understanding it. And so if you've ever been weird, unpopular and socially inept, you'll probably cringe all the way through this cruel freakshow and want to kick the filmmakers when it's done.
The eponymous hero (Jon Heder) is the main object of scorn, a frizzy-haired teenage beanpole with nerd glasses and an unkempt bird's-nest of curly red hair. He's largely ignored (and occasionally abused) by his classmates, which doesn't seem to have much of an impact on him; he wanders through the movie impervious to his surroundings, looking vaguely anaesthetized as he draws his fantasy drawings and imagines himself a normal member of society. Others in his family are equally deluded. His introverted 30ish brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) is unemployed and buries himself in internet chat rooms; his more aggressively macho Uncle Rico (John Gries) is so hung up on his blighted football career that can't stop talking about it. And between his few friends- slow-witted Mexican loser Pedro (Efrem Ramirez, cruelly stereotyped) and timid shopping-mall photographer Deb (Tina Majorino), he's got little chance of looking normal.
The film's social accuracy isn't in question (at least not until the unconvincing upbeat ending). Napoleon is a familiar species of individual, one who lives far out of the mainstream loop without knowing that loop exists; he makes up his own fanciful-nerd universe out of cheesy bikes, fantasy animals and castoffs from the local thrift shop. And director Jared Hess makes him more than just a caricature- he's sharply observed, instantly familiar and full of nuances that go beyond even Heder's pitch-perfect performance. But the one thing that's missing is pain. Though he's understandably irritated at the machinations of his clueless relatives, irritation is as far as it goes; he has no real feelings, and gets up for more punishment every time the filmmakers knock him down. As he's in no danger of showing hard feelings, one can feel fine about subjecting him to derision; he's programmed to be a good sport, and so the snarky bastards in the audience have full licence to point and laugh.
This is a disaster, because identification with Napoleon is more transgressive than one would expect. Unmoved as he is by fashion or anyone's negative opinion, he's a potential spanner in the works of the cultural machine; a film that actually locked into his point of view would shatter all of the conformist assumptions that drive people to move with the herd and centralize their image. Napoleon may be a geek, but there's no real reason he has to be a loser; his total indifference to what people think of him (and crucially, the exaggerated codes of masculinity that occasionally push him around) should make him a hero instead of a clown. But that's not going to happen, because the people who make this kind of movie are either so interested in feeling superior or so interested in disavowing their own nerdy past that they fail to take the road less travelled. And so poor Napoleon Dynamite is trapped on an endless loop, punished when he should be glorified for his treachery against the status quo.
Rating: **** [4 stars out of 4]
Filmmaker Jared Hess is only 24 years old and hails from small-town Idaho, but this unconventional route to filmmaking has only served to create a thoroughly engaging and wonderfully unique debut.
Mining his own adolescence for whimsical weirdness, Hess's Napoleon Dynamite follows the misadventures of its namesake character: a red-headed, moon-booted late-teen who spends his days drawing mythical beasts, practicing ninja moves and bearing the weight of the world on his slumped shoulders.
Napoleon, who may or may not be slightly dimwitted, is a misfit possessed of an inexplicable swagger despite his obvious social inabilities. Played by first-timer Jon Heder, the lead character is simultaneously hilarious and touching, with most of the laughs with and not at.
Napoleon lives with his hard-as-nails grandma and his snickering, fey, 30-year-old brother Kip in a town comprised primarily of vacant lots, dry grass and crumbling tract housing. The plot loosely traces Dynamite's blossoming friendship with Pedro -- the new kid just arrived from Mexico, and a grimly cheerful sophomore named Summer, a young woman with entrepreneurial aspirations and a regrettable fashion sense. Summer is played to the hilt by Hillary Duff's younger sister Haylie, and if Napoleon is any indication, the younger Duff is an actress with a much wider (and wilder) range than that of her famous sibling.
As Napoleon progresses, our unlikely hero begins to establish his own ad hoc family of outsiders whom he enlists to help Pedro on his quest to win the lofty office of class president against their nemesis Summer. At this juncture, Napoleon treads a bit on Election territory, yet retains a decidedly surrealist bent. While the film might be labeled a teen comedy, it actually comes across more as a David Lynch remake of Better Off Dead.
Another signpost is 1991's unsung Ruben and Ed, an oddball cult comedy starring Howard Hesseman and Crispin Glover. Napoleon shares the same off-kilter tone and matter-of-fact narrative eccentricity. As Hess would have us believe, that's simply the way things are in Preston, an ordinary place populated by out-of-the-ordinary people.
As the director, Hess conveys his message with a huge amount of heart despite the fact that his characters operate far outside the norm. But weirdness alone is not the point of Napoleon. The film is less about teen alienation than the alienation of everyone -- Dynamite's older brother and his overbearing uncle included.
What Hess's characters desire is what we all do -- to find that scrap of affirmation, love or approval that helps us to find ourselves.
Rating: **** 1/2 [4.5 stars out of 5]
"Napoleon Dynamite" is about the most antisocial misfit I've ever seen onscreen. As played with pitch-perfect timing by Jon Heder, Dynamite (that's his last name) would rather be left to his own devices. He doesn't socialize much, draws pictures during class and plays tether ball by himself. Other kids pick on him and, while he doesn't like it, he doesn't retaliate physically, but verbally. He withdraws into his own world where no one else exists. Tall, with bad hair and exposed upper teeth, Napoleon lacks the football-player look that permeates other high school movies. For every jock that roams the hallways, there is a Napoleon Dynamite who has few friends and no luck with the girls.
The movie is funny in a number of ways, and none of it is conventional. There is a school dance, but it serves to reaffirm Napoleon's status on the high school social scale, rather than as a ploy to give the bullies what they deserve. He lives with his grandmother, who suffers an injury from riding a dune buggy in an early scene. His skinny brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) spends every minute in Internet chat rooms and is in training to become a cage fighter. When the grandmother goes to the hospital, their uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in to take care of them. He's a football washout who had a big game in 1982 and wishes he could travel back in time to capitalize on that event. At one point, he and Kip buy what they believe to be a time machine off the Internet, but it backfires when Napoleon tries it out in a deliriously funny scene.
Fellow classmate and door-to-door salesgirl Deb (Tina Majorino, the girl with the map on her back in "Waterworld") stops by Napoleon's house, but she gets freaked out and runs off, leaving her merchandise on his doorstep. Napoleon returns them to her the next day, and for what might be the first time in his life, he falls in love. Of course, he's too shy to say anything. His only friend is a new student named Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who decides to run for class president against the popular Summer (Haylie Duff, Hilary's sister). Pedro is also attracted to Deb, but he has more nerve to say something to her, and she accepts, so once again Napoleon falls short of his goals.
The movie is organized as a series of small chapters that follow Napoleon throughout his daily routines. Rico encourages him to get a job, and he does so, on a chicken farm where the owners drink a substance that is nearly equal to the gross-out factor seen in Stifler's pale ale in "American Pie." Rico and Kip try to sell tupperware to the small-town residents, and when that idea runs out, they advertise breast enlargement herbs. Since Napoleon can't ask Deb to the dance (she's going with Pedro), he asks another girl by drawing her portrait. He apparently spent hours drawing what looks like a child's sketch.
Despite his ordeals, Napoleon always gets up when the day is new to endure it all over again. Whether it's putting up with pushy classmates or intrusive family members, he remains unchanged. He reacts in the most unexpected manner to hostility and says things that may make sense to him but make no sense to anyone else. In fact, I suspect bullies taunt him because they want to hear what he'll say in his defense. Here's an example:
Guy - "Hey, Napoleon. What did you do last summer again?"
Napoleon - "I told you! I spent it with my uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines!"
Guy - "Did you shoot any?"
Napoleon - "Yeah, like, fifty of them! They were surrounding my cousin! What the heck would you do in a situation like that?"
Guy - "What kind of gun did you use?"
Napoleon - "A freakin' 12-gauge, what do you think?"
Napoleon knows he'll never be popular, so he just acts however he wants with disregard to what anyone else thinks. He gets frustrated when people ask him too many questions, and if he's in an uncomfortable situation, he speaks his mind. When forced to view his uncle's personal video, for example, he shouts that it's the worst video ever made. He's like the Adam Sandler character in "Punch-Drunk Love," only more vocal about how he feels.
The co-writer and director, Jared Hess, fashioned a film that draws nearly all of its humor from its eccentric characters. Everyone here has a story, and nothing was deemed too outlandish for inclusion. In this dazzling display of comic timing and strong writing, it is Jon Heder's performance that comes out on top. He delivers his dialogue as if irritated just to talk and his physical comedy is unexpectedly funny. Watch him as he rushes off the stage towards the end once the music stops, or when dismounting a horse, or when he climbs over a fence to escape Uncle Rico. I saw "Napoleon Dynamite" at the same theater that was playing "The Village." How often is it that one of the year's best movies plays right alongside one of the year's worst?
It's charming. It's hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It's Napoleon Dynamite--the first feature film from 24-year-old Brigham Young University student Jared Hess--and, if there is any justice, it's going to be huge.
Remember that kid who was always drawing mythical beasts in his notebooks? Whose hitched-high pants and tucked-in T-shirts merely served to attenuate his gangly limbs? Whose evasive, half-shut eyes complemented his permanently slacked jaw and perpetual wheeze? And who, with no apologies, panted over time machines advertised in the back of comic books and posted a sign on his bedroom door establishing "Pegasus Xing"? That's Napoleon (Jon Heder), a teenager who has reached such Olympian heights of nerdishness that he's oblivious to it, either as failure or achievement. Even as Napoleon is harangued and abused at school, tossed against lockers and left, daily, to a solo game of tetherball, he reacts with righteous indignation, utterly unconvinced that he's the problem. And for this--for his dignity in the face of scorn, for his unabashed himselfness--we love Napoleon Dynamite.
The movie loves him, too. In fact, it's nothing less than a celebration of its central character--hardships, foibles, bad hair and all. It takes place in Preston, Idaho, the hometown of director Hess (who co-wrote the film with his wife, Jerusha), and it catalogs, with patience and art, the disappointments and victories (however small) in Napoleon's life.
Napoleon lives with his brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who at 32 has no occupation other than searching for his "soul mate" in Internet chat rooms, in the home of their feisty grandmother (Sandy Martin), owner of an equally feisty llama named Tina. When Grandma breaks her coccyx in a dune buggy accident (truly, it's hilarious), Napoleon and Kip can hardly be entrusted to take care of themselves. So Grandma sends Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a sleazy salesman caught in the glory days of 1982, when even as a benched high school football player, he "could have gone pro." As if born to the role of meddlesome caregiver, Rico immediately sets about establishing a Tupperware business, eating all of the family's steak and ruining Napoleon's life.
Such as it is. In general, Napoleon wants little more than to be left at peace with his "ligers" (combination lion-tigers, "known for [their] skills in magic"), though, like any human, he craves connection. To that end, he's in luck, as new student Pedro (Efren Ramirez) appears at school and accepts Napoleon's halting friendship with nary a blink. (Short, perpetually sweating and mustached, Pedro is Sancho Panza to Napoleon's Don Quixote.) The two have an understated connection, to say the least: "So," Napoleon mutters beneath his breath, "you and me are pretty much friends by now, right?" Unlike Napoleon, Pedro has a way with (or at least a strategy with regard to) girls: When he likes one, he bakes her a cake.
Napoleon can barely communicate with anyone, let alone girls. And when Deb, a shy student who braids gimp lanyards and runs a home glamour-shot business, shows up on his doorstep, he's confronted with the need to learn. At first, Deb tries to sell Napoleon a lanyard, and he makes the ultimate geek mistake of saying exactly what he means: "I already made, like, infinity of those in scout camp." This, of course, is not what Deb needs to hear, and she runs away in shame.
Later, Napoleon makes it up to her, in his staccato, painfully awkward way. But she doesn't mind. Like Napoleon, Deb is untroubled by appearances; instead, she seeks (and sees) inner beauty. Actress Tina Majorino plays Deb like a young Lili Taylor, all buttercup sweetness and light. You want to reach out and give her a big, everything-will-be-OK hug--though, of course, she doesn't need it. She already feels the love.
What a pleasure it is to watch a film that so adores its characters, and that allows them the space to be totally themselves. Though Napoleon and his friends often seem locked inside their bodies, unable to break out into authentic expression, they manage to get their points across. And whenever they do speak, or mumble, or drone, every utterance is authentic; their unbending earnestness is enough to melt even the iciest heart. When the slinky-smoove star of Napoleon's instructional dance video asks him whether he's ready to get his groove on, Napoleon, a boy any self-respecting groove has long since abandoned, says, "Yuuuus." And then he does it. He totally gets his groove on.
Ultimately, there's not much in the way of a plot here; if Napoleon Dynamite has a flaw, it's the sense of loss one feels about two-thirds of the way through, when the tension has largely failed to mount. But there is so much compassion, wisdom and comic insight that the film is hugely rewarding in any case. Deadpan irony is the rule, understatement is the lingua franca, and the result is an unceasingly accurate portrayal of real people whose quiet lives are touching and humanly grand. Napoleon, Pedro, Deb--even Kip and Uncle Rico: All of these folks dare to dream, and their dreams are beautiful.
Grade: B+
Finally, there are the nerds who are actually arrogant and abrasive. Their attention always seems to be somewhere far, far away. If you interrupt their reverie by attempting to engage them, they're likely to call you "stupid" or an "idiot." You walk away thinking, "No wonder no one wants to talk to that guy. What's his story, anyway?" Well, " Napoleon Dynamite" won't quite tell you what makes that guy tick, but it will make him into someone who at least entertains you.
As any child of the 1980s knows, "nerds" come in many flavors. There are the shy nerds. Even if you took it upon yourself to pry these wallflowers from their hiding place, you wouldn't get much of a response. Then there are the relatively outgoing nerds. Those folks may not talk much to the popular kids, but within the nerd society, they are the big shots and hardly stop to catch a breath as they pontificate about operating systems or anime. And, finally, as I said before, there are the nerds.
Yes, our red-headed hero carries the unlikely name "Napoleon Dynamite." (Elvis Costello fans may recall that this was an alias that Costello used on his album "Blood and Chocolate.") Director Jared Hess relates that he got the name from a strange man he met in Chicago, and didn't know that most likely, this mysterious transient had copped it from Elvis. "I wish I could change it now," Hess says. This high school student from Idaho looks through perpetually squinted eyes at a world that is a somewhat disturbing cross between the world of today and the world of the Bangles and Kool Moe Dee. Although his reclusive older brother Kip spends most of his life in those newfangled Internet chat rooms, Napoleon kicks it '80s style with his frizzy white-boy perm, swank moon boots and those huge glasses that are staples of any embarrassing yearbook picture. And the rest of his class has a similar sense of style: Pastels dominate fashions, " Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper gets cranked at the school dance, and Napoleon's lone female friend Deb ("Waterworld"'s Tina Majorino) has a ponytail pulled so tightly to the side that you could probably use it to swing her around the room. Napoleon is played by 26-year-old Jon Heder, who -- like much of the cast -- is making his feature film debut. The gangly Heder doesn't look anything like a high school student, but it works in this instance, as towering over his peers only brings his misfit status into more vivid relief. Hess ably emphasizes his character's isolation by using slow, wide camera shots that showcase the quiet Idaho landscape.
Anyway, the fact is that just looking at Napoleon is funny. Heder had already played the character in a short film that played at the 2003 Slamdance Festival, and in an interview, often talked about "Napoleon" as if the nebbish were right there in the room. On the surface, at least, Napoleon is either truly laid-back or borderline autistic: He can't even be bothered to open his eyes fully or glance in someone's direction. Napoleon lives largely in a fantasy world, in which he is one step away from gaining the skills of a ninja and where spinning tales about how he spent his summer shooting wolverines will prevent a beatdown from the jocks (it doesn't work). But real life begins to intrude on his teenage reverie in a variety of ways. First his grandmother injures herself in a dune buggy accident, leaving Napoleon and his 32-year-old brother "alone." This brings about the return of Uncle Rico (Jon Gries of "Real Genius"). Rico is a former high school quarterback who lives in regret that Coach didn't put him in the big game. Now, he hawks Tupperware and "breast enhancers" with equally little sense of shame. Another interloper into Napoleon's world is a new student, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who is every bit his equal in underreaction and nonconformity... and who unwittingly becomes his competition for the hand of Deb. The simmering tension, however, doesn't stop Napoleon from backing Pedro's underdog bid for the class presidency against the prohibitive favorite, perky cheerleader Summer (Haylie Duff -- yes, her sister.)
If those last couple of sentences give the impression that this is all leading up to a boilerplate "Revenge of the Nerds" resolution, well, you can rest easy. Much like its lead character, "Napoleon Dynamite" is not about to start playing by the general rules of society. Indeed, in a plot development that has no basis in the reality of any high school of which I know, the presidential election ends up being settled by a dance competition. And although we presume that lessons are indeed learned, they're not exactly dwelled upon, as the 86-minute film makes a quick dash for the exit.
Although folks might expect more than 86 minutes for their ticket fee these days, it's probably for the best, because "Napoleon Dynamite" is, to an extent, a one-joke film. Much like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, you will most likely recognize the lead character as the prototype of someone you've met yourself. It's easy to laugh both with him and at him, as he spouts outdated slang ("Dang!" "Sweet!" "Retarded !"), and gets into surreal scrapes involving things such as a bar of Chap Stick or an unhappy llama. However, much like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, there's not that much meat here besides the well-realized lead character and some physical humor. Uncle Rico's desire to correct his past wrongs is drawn out at length and then put to rest via a "dick joke." He then continues to pop in for some more moderately amusing, but ultimately random and directionless, scenes. Despite a valiant effort by Ramirez, who matches Heder blank stare for blank stare, the character of Pedro remains enigmatic. Summer and the other "popular kids" could hardly be more cliche or undeveloped. Since the film's climax is based around a nominal showdown between Pedro and Summer, these turn out to be major flaws.
What's designed to be the " big ending" ends up, just like the rest of the film, a gag based on physical humor and the " wackiness" of the Napoleon character. Not that that's bad; it's a helluva lot more than most "SNL" movies deliver, I can tell ya. Still, it's not exactly the level of humor -- along with other emotions -- that Wes Anderson was able to wring out of the triumph of a deadpan teenager in "Rushmore."
"Napoleon Dynamite" can't really claim to be much more than a funny film. But it can make you laugh, and it can give you a character you'll remember for quite a while. And that is, indeed, pretty sweet.
Rating: *** 1/2 [3.5 out of 4 stars]
"Quirky" doesn't even begin to describe Napoleon Dynamite, an overly colorful but often hilarious look at a small-town high school loser. Refreshingly, director/cowriter Jared Hess creates characters with few likable traits, and yet somehow makes a very funny and entertaining movie. In the endless onslaught of teen movies, Napoleon Dynamite stands apart as fresh and original.
Super-nerd Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) doesn't fit in well at school. He has a large red Afro and wears T-shirts with unicorns on them. His membership in the Happy Hands Club (they do interpretive sign language to song) does little to improve his social standing. From the beginning, it's clear that Napoleon is a different kind of movie nerd: he's not a very likable geek, even to the audience. To him, most everyone is an "ID-iot!" Napoleon is whiny, petulant, and hostile, and barely has enough interest in the world to open his eyes all the way.
Napoleon lives in Preston, Idaho with his Grandma (Sandy Martin) and his 30-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). The brothers are left home alone after Grandma is hospitalized following a nasty spill during a joy ride on a four-wheeler. Sleazy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) then arrives to babysit the brothers, despite Kip being over 30. The unemployed Kip wastes his days away chatting online with "soulmate" LaFawnduh, but Uncle Rico convinces him to help with a new business venture, selling faux-Tupperware products and herbal breast enhancers door-to-door.
At school, Napoleon finds a new best friend in Mexican transfer student Pedro (Efren Ramirez). The two see dating potential in fellow outcast Deb (Tina Majorino), yet it's Pedro who asks her to the prom. Pedro then gets the insane idea to run against the beautiful and popular Summer (Haylie Duff) for class president. Can Napoleon help Pedro do the impossible? Perhaps Napoleon performing an Election Day funk-dance number in moon boots in front of the entire student body will do the trick.
The unique humor of Napoleon Dynamite comes in the details provided by Hess (he cowrote the screenplay with his wife Jerusha Hess). The movie is set in the present day, yet life in Preston seems stuck in the mid-1980s. Hess peppers the soundtrack with all-'80s music, from When in Rome's "The Promise" to the "A-Team" theme. Uncle Rico purchases a time machine off the Internet to take him back to his high school football glory days of 1982. Deb wears a ponytail on the side of her head and sports several large, clunky, plastic bracelets. And Napoleon lives in his own universe entirely.
Heder's fearless comedic performance as Napoleon is the true key to the film's success. Whether Napoleon is griping about having to care for Grandma's pet llama, Tina, or performing that climactic dance number, Heder plays the character full-throttle, warts-and-all. The movie is all the funnier for it. Like the nerd himself, Napoleon Dynamite is hilarious, original, and surprisingly endearing.
Rating: ** [2 out of 4 stars]
Boredom is like catnip to some filmmakers. Nothing stirs up the sludge of their creative juices like the prospect of people with nothing to say and nothing to do not saying it and not doing it. I offer this as a working axiom: a movie about boring people being bored is very likely to be boring.
Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is a gawky, gangly teenager in Preston, Idaho, the hometown of the movie's 24-year-old director Jared Hess and his co-writer wife Jerusha. The filmmakers are not long out of high school themselves, and their debut film is a look back at the interminable agonies of school days through the person of Napoleon. He's a social outsider, a slacker virtually immobilized by ennui, an awkward kid with a shambling gait, a head of carroty curls, and a mouth shaped like a pork-pie hat. He lives with his even-nerdier 30-ish brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), and his feisty, motorcycle-riding Grandma (Sandy Martin). He seems to be the only kid his age to ride the school bus, and sits there like a sight gag towering above the little kids, waiting to be spoken to so he can respond with withering scorn ("What are you going to do today, Napoleon?" "Anything I want to! Gosh!")
When Grandma fractures her coccyx jumping her Harley on the dunes, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) comes to babysit the boys. Rico, like the Hesses, is looking back with nostalgia at his high school years. That was the peak of his now-fortyish life, when he played football and almost won the state championship ("If Coach had only put me in in the fourth quarter...") He videotapes himself throwing passes, and throws passes of another kind in his job as a door-to-door salesman of plastic containers and a herbal breast enhancer.
The main plot thread of Napoleon Dynamite involves Napoleon's managing the campaign for student body president of his only friend, the slow-talking, slow-thinking Mexican immigrant Pedro (Efren Ramirez). Pedro, like Napoleon, is so non-expressive he barely moves his mouth when he talks, but he is the only kid in school with a mustache, which is credentials enough for tossing his hat in the ring. Being Pedro's campaign manager taps into reserves of action and determination not much used in Napoleon's life to this point, and it climaxes in a rousing display of talent and creativity that is so wildly out of left field that it's as if another character has been introduced, as if John Travolta has done a walk-in and taken over Napoleon's body. There's also something of a romantic thread, involving Deb (Tina Majorino), a girl who undergoes a similar personality transplant during the course of the movie.
There are funny moments, and signs of a nascent creative potential, in Napoleon Dynamite. It's encouraging to see a feature film of this assurance from filmmakers on the sunny side of the quarter-century mark, and you've got to love the names Jared and Jerusha, which sound like something out of Star Wars. The Hesses condescend to their characters, playing them for laughs, while at the same time affecting an attitude of not caring, pretty much as the characters themselves do. There are in fact plenty of events in the movie, but they take place in that slack, bloodless atmosphere that works like hemlock on character and viewer alike. Nobody in the movie seems to have much fun, with the exception of Granny before the accident, and the bullies who slam Napoleon into his locker at school.
But audiences at Sundance (where the movie was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize) apparently had a lot of fun with it, and so have many reviewers. Heder's performance in the title role struck me as profoundly uninteresting, but at the same time there is talent legible between the lines. Ruell's Kip is more faceted, and his transformation from internet geek to hipster geek has the satisfaction of actually coming out of something understandable. The most interesting work comes from the cast's most grizzled veterans, Gries (Twin Falls, Idaho) and Majorino (who at 19 has an impressive string of credits that includes Waterworld and Andrew Shea's Santa Fe). Gries captures the painful self-awareness of failure that lurks beneath Uncle Rico's macho swagger. His internet purchase of a time machine to transport himself back to 1982 is a shallow gag, but the yearning for that time of almost-greatness in Rico's life is made palpable by Gries. Majorino survives a mystifying character leap from painfully shy door-to-door salesgirl to fairly assured young lady with a goal-oriented interest in Napoleon.
Movies, like any art form, are largely a matter of taste. Whether or not your taste runs to the sort of slack-jawed, slow-witted world that the Hesses are offering here, it's probably worth keeping an eye on them. They could be heading toward the creative company of such filmmakers as Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse) and Wes Anderson (Rushmore). For now, if boredom turns you on, Napoleon Dynamite could light your fuse.
I have discovered a film that I knew nothing about coming into this year and it completely blew me away. Every year if we're lucky enough we will have a few of these and for me Napoleon Dynamite is that film. The film made its premiere at Sundance this year and garnered great reviews. Fox Searchlight saw the potential in it and bought the film right away for $3 million. Napoleon Dynamite is the feature length directorial debut of 25-year-old Jared Hess. After the success of his 9 minute short Peluca at the Slamdance Film Festival, Hess was encouraged to turn his short into a feature length film. I myself am grateful he did. Napoleon Dynamite is sincerely one of the funniest films I have ever seen and every scene will make you smile or laugh out loud.
Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder) is NOT just a nerd or a geek or a dweeb or a dork. He's all those things and then some, living life on a whole different plane than anyone else in Preston, Idaho. He has a fascination for medieval warriors and an obsession with unicorns. The world around him is made up of a meager looking 32-year-old brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), that fancies himself an online Romero and Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) who is stuck in his glory football stardom days of 1982. Uncle Rico comes to look after Napoleon and Kip after their sole guardian, Grandma, suffers a dune boogie accident. Napoleon soon meets the new kids at school, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a recent Mexican immigrant that looks just as out of place in the town as Napoleon feels. Pedro is a mostly quiet companion with droopy eyes, a blank stare and a killer mustache. Both boys are as equally matched in their outcast style by Deb (Tina Majorino), a mostly quirky and colorful young girl that becomes a love interest of sorts for both of them. During a school dance that exclaims everything '80's, Pedro is motivated to run for school president. His opponent for class president is Summer (Haylie Duff), the peppy popular girl that has every chance to win. Unwilling to let Pedro lose and be humiliated by this experience, Napoleon uses all the skills he can muster up to help his friend in his time of desperate need.
The look and feel of the film is so detailed to 80's and 90's culture, the school dance itself might trigger flashbacks for 30-somethings. The art direction of this film portrays the sometime 10-year gap between mainstream culture and small town culture that exists in today's society. One other example is a boy band song that is used during a school performance. This is the kind of humor that feels like a live action Simpsons episode. It's that good.
All the performances are impressive in this film. Jon Heder brings out a frustrated and angered performance from Napoleon. However, what is much more impressive is Heder's subtle portrayal of Napoleon's charm and care. Although Napoleon seems to be an odd and angry kid at first, his relationship with Pedro demonstrates a side of Napoleon that values friendship and loyalty. That itself is the essence of the film.
Before I went into the theater to experience this wonderful film, I heard many comparisons to The Royal Tenenbaums. That in itself is quite a compliment, but Napoleon Dynamite does not need any comparisons, it stands on its own as a great film. Simply said, I loved LOVED this film and everyone should go see it a hundred times when it is released.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Film trends are sometimes confounding. We're currently in the midst of a teenage comedy cycle, while simultaneously an independent film resurgence is also on the rise. Surprisingly the two haven't really met. Sure, there have been a few teenage indies in recent years, but their themes have been darker, usually singing the tune of angst and rebellion (Igby Goes Down, Donnie Darko), and the humor has been accidental for the most part. This makes sense once you consider the successful teen comedy formula: popular kids, witty catch phrases, buxom, beautiful women. All of these attributes would turn the typical indie audience sour. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), Napoleon Dynamite has crossed that bridge in typical indie fashion by becoming the antithesis of the formulaic Hollywood production.
Our protagonist, Mr. Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) himself, isn't your typical high school kid. He wears his hair like John Shaft, his glasses like Billy Holly, and his wardrobe would fit perfectly in Screech's closet. He may not seem to have a lot of direction, but he has plenty of skills, such as nunchucks, tetherball, sketching and ripping bike jumps. People don't seem to understand Napoleon too well at school, save for his best friend Pedro, who is planning a run for Student Body President. He lives with his brother Kip, who spends his days scamming women in internet chatrooms, and his uncle Rico, who yearns to return to his glory second-string quarterback days of 1982.
The characters are what make Napoleon such a joy to watch. Their incognizant goofiness endears the audience, while their cliche-ridden actions and antiquated dialog make them a riot. Next to Napoleon, the strongest character is his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), who eats nothing but steak, videotapes himself throwing footballs, and sneaks quick peeks at his muscles when he thinks nobody's looking. He's also a businessman, porting his tupperware from door-to-door, using his charm to induce lonely housewives to take in his wares. Napoleon's brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) is the weakest character of the bunch, but he still has his moments as he modifies himself to be more appealing to his cybermate LaFawnduh. Pedro's (Efren Ramirez) cool restraint and broken English makes him the perfect straight man, who surprises us with effective, yet odd lines such as "I will build her a cake." The characters are mostly flat, with little evolution throughout the course of the film, but their excessive quirkiness ensures that we don't lose affection for them.
What sets Napoleon Dynamite apart from other teenage comedies is how it explores the less glamorous aspects, the underbelly, of high school life. The main characters live in a run-down house, in the middle of nowhere, get around by courtesy of Uncle Rico's rust colored Dodge Van, while wearing secondhand Walmart wardrobes. The character quirks ease us through the barren landscape as we witness the destitute life through the eyes and perception of those who are living it.
Napoleon Dynamite cannot be judged like other flicks, even by indie standards. In addition to the flat characters, there is no tight or guided narrative. These aren't goal oriented characters, thus they are subject to chance and like the audience, they seem to be watching their life from afar, powerless to alter it. Again, Dynamite can be forgiven these flaws, if you can even call them flaws, because it doesn't aspire to be cohesive and wouldn't be successful as a comedy if it were. It has no pretensions whatsoever for being high art. In fact, it's quite the opposite, but it's highly satirical nature keeps it from being brainless either.
Dynamite is set in the modern day, but we only know that due to the presence of the internet. The set design, costumes, music, and just about every other mise-en-scene element owes itself to the late-70s and eighties, at their worst moments. This makes the already preposterous characters seem even more backwards, as they are living a good decade or two behind everyone else, yet are completely unaware.
Napoleon Dynamite is hardly a perfect movie, but it's one of the more memorable offerings of the year, exactly the type of film that keeps indie filmmakers on the map. I expect its square vernacular with plenty of "dang"s and "shuck"s to be echoed in the high school halls and the office water cooler alike this year, as it is the strongest contender for the indie cult classic right now.
Vote for Pedro.
Napoleon Dynamite is one of the most refreshing comedies in years, a dry satire about Midwestern teens that skewers its prey more accurately than Tina Fey's Mean Girls or even the brilliant softball lob that was Saved.
Shot for just $400,000 and sporting a cast of complete unknowns, Napoleon scored at the Sundance Film Festival before landing a distributor in Fox Searchlight, who then spun a grass roots campaign to an impressive $41 million take. But prior to becoming The Little Indie That Could, writer-director Jared Hess first spun this world in Peluca, a nine minute short that won raves at Slamdance in 2003.
Not surprisingly, Jon Heder first played this part under the name Seth as the focus of Peluca and it was the success of that short film that allowed Hess to develop Napoleon Dynamite. And if this were to become a weekly show and could maintain the same creative team, I'd program my TiVo for a Season Pass.
Heder's Napoleon isn't the most likable guy at first. A tall, lanky, brillo-headed nerd with a chip on his shoulder, he makes the most of his miserable world, which spins even further downhill when his biker grandma is hospitalized after breaking her coccyx. Forever trying to prove himself and the whipping boy to the jocks, he doesn't make it easy. He lies about girls he's dated and weapons he claims he has mastered. After all, he tells us "Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. You know, like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills..."
His main source of grief is his effeminately weird older brother Kip, played with nerdy sass by Aaron Ruell. As bad as Napoleon thinks he may have it, he doesn't come close to Kip, who is perhaps the biggest dork ever depicted on film. Kip spends most of his waking life in chat rooms on his grandma's dime. Most hilariously, Ruell plays him a bit macho. When Napoleon asks him a question, Kip's response is "Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter."
His creepy uncle Rico shows up when Grandma goes into the hospital. Addicted to get rich quick schemes and stuck in 1982, which is when he brushed up against greatness for just a moment, Rico is someone we've all known at one point: someone so desperate to relive the greatest instant of their life, they'd go so far to, say, buy a time machine on the internet. Think I'm kidding?
Napoleon also meets two people who will affect his life: Pedro, who, despite a half-hearted grip on the English language, has a kick-ass bike and will run for school president; and shy teen photographer Deb (Tina Majorino) who wears her ponytail on the side of her head. Being smooth with women isn't Napoleon's strongest suit. When he spots Deb sitting by herself in the cafeteria, he tells her "I see you're drinking 1% (milk). Is that because you think you're fat?"
This odd trio all has one thing in common that none could articulate in the clearest of moments: that they all yearn to be more than they are without realizing what they are capable of. Except for Pedro, maybe, who seems pretty confident, if not very successful at times.
Like Wes Anderson's droll comedies (The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore), Hess' style is deliberately paced with a minimum of camera moves. It's enough to the just watch these people as they scheme, plot and cause each other more stress than should logically be there. Completely devoid of sentimentality, Hess pulls a pretty clever trick out of his bag: he makes us gradually care for these folks to the degree that when the movie ends, it disappointing because we have to leave them.
And speaking of which, don't stop the movie until it's completely finished because you'll miss one of the best gags: an additional scene that runs a full 5 minutes once the credits end.
Napoleon Dynamite manages the rare feat of being laugh-out-loud funny without relying on crude antics or fart jokes. The film is loaded with wonderfully self-referential touches: the opening credit sequence reflects all the food that the characters eat or drink. The characters are so original and well written that the actors can't help but be good and it doesn't hurt that in the film's promotion, nowhere does the creative team or the actors take precedent over the concept.
To quote Napoleon, "freakin' sweet!"
Rating: 2 out of 10
Movie Review: Napoleon Dynamite
Alternate Title: Revenge of the Nerds (2004)
Story: Slap me upside the head for going to see this loser. It was released in early June and is still playing in the theaters. The 'buzz' was that it has developed a cult following. I hear the word 'cult' and I am interested. What a mistake!
Director, co-writer (with his wife, Jerusha) and star, Jared Hess try to deliver a Dumb and Dumber Nerd film for this generation. OY! Napoleon Dynamite is one of those mouth breathing dorky teens that most other kids avoid and bully. He manages to make a few friends (Dorks Unite!) and through goofy vignettes we see the development of his character which ultimately gets recognition.
Everyone is stereotyped throughout. There are no nuances or surprises. Even though the film had a smugness to it and was flawed in almost every way - I did get an occasional big laugh. I should have had a clue when I saw that it was an MTV production. Maybe I am too old for this type of film. (I did like the original Revenge of the Nerds.)
Acting: If they gave out awards for deadpan poker faces, this film would receive the largest trophy. It must have been hard not to laugh at the script and the wardrobe but the cast stayed in character (or lack thereof). Jared Hess as Napoleon might want to consider another career (although anywhere after this film would be in an upward mode). Tina Majorino (the cute, Molly Singer in Corinna, Corinna) is all grown up and I am sorry to say - in this film.
Predilection: This was a favorite at Sundance and has cult following.
Critters: A llama (or alpaca, I am not sure), lots of chickens, cows and dogs.
Food: Food is a large part of the film. Steak is eaten for many meals. Eggs are also a big item.
Visual Art: Wonderfully tacky stuff throughout.
Opening Titles: The opening titles gave me hope that I was about to be thoroughly entertained. They were, in fact, the best part of the film. The titles were written out on food items that teenagers would eat. Funny visuals.
Theater Audience: Six other (no make that five, one person left in the middle) dumbstruck folks.
Quirky Meter: Tried way too hard to be quirky.
Predictability Level: Over the top.
Tissue Usage: I cried for joy when it was over.
Oscar Worthy: NO!
Nit Picking: Not everyone can be a film maker. Most people should be in the audience - not behind the camera.
Big Screen or Rental: Neither. But if you are looking for stupid silly stuff try renting any of the three Nerd films.
Length: 90 minutes.
LOBO HOWLS: 2
Rating: 8 out of 8
I don't mind at all that this "indie" film is startlingly well-promoted and sports a fancy animated web site. I have no shame--I don't care if Spielberg directed it. It's so flippin' funny I can hardly stand it. But I should preface all this by confessing that part of my giddy delight comes from the fact that our hero, Napoleon Dynamite, strongly resembles my socially inept younger brother.
Like Napoleon, my brother has perfected the Inaudible Mumble, the Inappropriately Angry Response To An Innocent Question, and the Outrageous Request For Others To Drop Whatever They Are Doing And Drive Across Town For Some Completely Ridiculous Reason. These things, plus the uncanny physical resemblance, had my husband and I rolling in the aisles.
And like my brother, Napoleon suffers from delusions of martial arts grandeur and his idea of a compliment goes something like: "I see you're drinking 1% milk. Is that because you think you're fat? Because you're not. You could probably be drinking whole milk." Needless to say, it's Napoleon's lack of social skills (not numchuck skills, as he believes) that holds him back in the challenging world of high school politics. He hates everyone and everything. His perpetual exasperation and totally unacceptable response to the people and llamas around him is simply hysterical.
But on to the actual story.... Our unfortunately named hero lives in present-day rural Idaho. Were it not for the mention of internet chat rooms, you might easily assume that the film takes place in 1983. But no. The costume and music choices sadly show just how behind-the-times small towns can be. The plotline is fairly subtle. Napoleon lives with his geeky brother, Kip, and endures the temporary presence of his smarmy uncle, Rico, while riding bikes with his apparently brain-damaged best friend, Pedro. The genius of this movie is all in the characters, every one of which is flawlessly conceived and performed.
Tracking Napoleon through a few weeks of high school hell, a kind of alternative Revenge of the Nerds story emerges. Napoleon strikes up an awkward romance with a strange girl who tries to sell him an amateur Glamour Shots photo session and together they set out to get Pedro elected as class president.
I can't say too much more without revealing the jokes that you will so relish discovering throughout this absurd story. I'll leave you with the enticing thought of two horrendous hair pieces and not one, but two sign-language dance sequences to enjoy. And in what may be an homage to the 80's culture in which he is trapped, Napoleon also uses the power of dance to overcome his fear and change the course of his high school career. You won't forget it.
Whether or not you have a little Napoleon in your life, you'd have to be brain-dead not to appreciate the humor of the universal a--hole found in all teenagers. It's the nerdy jerk in all of us that Jon Heder portrays so well as Napoleon Dynamite. You won't get an explanation of his bizarre moniker. And there's no mention of where his parents might be or why he is... well, the way he is. It's just a-day-in-the-life kind of story, which you will probably find utterly side-splitting.
Roger Ebert thinks the folks at Sundance only laughed at this movie to avoid appearing uncool. Yeah. Right. Show your age much, Ebert? If you don't find teenage social bungling amusing and you don't find humor inherent in the Future Farmers of America organization, then maybe you won't like this film. I can't imagine it, but I guess it's possible. I think the characters in this film are genuinely, unavoidably, and brilliantly funny. It takes a special kind of sourpuss not to laugh at them. Anyway, for you film know-it-alls... here's the obligatory mention of the filmmaker's influences: Wes Anderson and Todd Solondz. There you go. Done. Vote for Pedro!