Rating: Man sitting alert in chair, holding hat [2 out of 4]
The geek comedy "Napoleon Dynamite" has to be enjoyed in spurts. There's no cohesive story, just a series of opportunities for the title character (Jon Heder) to strut his gawky stuff.
Watch Napoleon handle an unruly chicken. See him perform a sign-language translation of Bette Midler's "The Rose." Witness him sucker-slap his equally dorky brother.
Married filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess seem to have let their love for Heder's performance cloud their storytelling judgment. You can see how it happened. Heder's Napoleon might wear the lopsided 'fro of screen nerds before him, but he's a singular presence, demanding respect instead of seeking acceptance. He's a mouth-breather with a quick temper who would fight the school bully if his antihistamine weren't holding him back. The comic setups are rather geek-movie conventional for a picture that keeps trying to announce its differentness. "Napoleon" is unique only if you gauge uniqueness by an inability to tell the era in which a film is set.
Napoleon's Idaho high school classmates seem to be living in 2004, but they slow-dance to Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time." The house where the boy lives with his grandma is replete with fake wood paneling, a top-load VCR and ticky-tacky decor that nobody within 300 miles of a Wal-Mart would still have.
The filmmakers want to evoke the "Sixteen Candles" era of geekdom without committing to a period movie or acknowledging what's happened in the intervening years. Napoleon's three-piece, 1970s thrift-store suit was unfashionable in 1984, but today it looks like something a San Francisco hipster might wear.
The film's best moments happen between Heder and Efren Ramirez, as a Mexican immigrant student who's innately cooler than Napoleon but mellow enough to appreciate him. One deft exchange hints at what might have occurred had the Hesses worked harder to buck convention. Spying a pretty girl in the cafeteria, Napoleon asks his pal, "Do you dare me to go talk to her?" The Ramirez character responds with a very mild "sure," as if reluctant to follow the teen movie cliche of the deluded fellow geek.
Key questions are left unanswered. We don't know what happened to Napoleon's missing parents or how he got that crazy name. The grandmother vanishes shortly after the picture begins, replaced by a van-drivin' uncle obsessed with his early-'80s glory days. Actor Jon Gries' terrible shag wig serves as a constant visual reminder of the shortcuts undermining this picture.
Grade: B+
Audience: 14 and up
MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements and language.
Profanity: Mild schoolyard insults
Nudity/Sex Character sells breast-enhancing herbs
Alcohol/Drugs: None
Violence/Scariness: Bullies and other adolescent humiliations, comic accidents, animal killed off-screen
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
When you are hurtling through adolescence, overcome with warring emotions and desperately trying to learn a whole new set of rules for status and interaction, everything you thought you knew seems suspect and even your own body is completely unfamiliar and terrifyingly out of control. It sometimes seems that the best anchor to keep you from levitating off the ground over the intense humiliation and the overwhelming injustice of it all is to adopt an air of ferocious perpetual exasperation and disdain. But what keeps you going are those few moments when a tantalizing glimpse of the possibility of pure pleasure provokes the ultimate accolade: "Sweet!"
So, when our eponymous hero, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) climbs onto the schoolbus and slumps into a seat in the back and an admiring younger kid asks him, "What are you going to do today, Napoleon?" his reply is, "Whatever I feel like I want to do! Gosh!" Then whatever he feels like he wants to do turns out to be tying a muscle man action figure to a string and throwing it out the window to pull along behind the bus. Sweet!
And when he he opens the door to find a shy classmate peddling Glamour Shot photos and lanyard keychains, he disdainfully tells her, "I got like a finity of those I made in summer camp."
And when his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) taunts him, "Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know I'm trying to become a cage fighter," he replies, "Since when? We both know you've got like the worst reflexes of all time!" Then he has to try to prove it, and it appears that in the race for that title, they may be in a tie.
And when Napoleon sees his new friend Pedro's (Efren Ramirez) bike, he says, "Dang! Ever take it off any sweet jumps?" When he tries, it doesn't work out very well.
Life seems so unfair. Women only like men who've got skills, and to Napoleon that means numbchuck skills, computer hacking skills, or maybe some really sweet dance moves. Those endless arms and legs don't seem to want to cooperate well. Heder is a brilliant physical performer, showing us everything about Napoleon in the way he stands, sits, walks, and responds to everything just a half-second too late.
Then there's Napoleon's uncle and his schemes to make a lot of money and go back in time to that crucial turning point in a high school football game, Pedro's campaign for class president against alpha girl Summer (played by Haylie Duff, older sister of Hillary), and what happens when Kit's online babe shows up. And the young photographer who tells her subject, "Just imagine you're weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny little seahorses."
The movie's deliriously specific detail, superb use of the Idaho setting, affection for its characters, unexpected developments, and most of all its genuine sweetness keep us laughing with Napoleon, not at him. He may be clueless, but he has a great heart and we know he will be fine, not just for a satisfyingly happy ending for the movie but beyond. He might even develop enough perspective on his life to be able to make a movie about it.
This movie is the first feature from 24-year-old director Jared Hess, who wrote the film with his wife Jerusha. They met co-producer Jeremy Coon and 26-year-old John Heder at Brigham Young University. To put it in Napoleon's terms, they all got skills. I'm looking forward to whatever they do next.
Parents should know that the movie contains some implied sexual encounters between adults. School bullies use headlocks and punches. There are some accidents used for comic effect and an animal is killed off-screen. A character sells purportedly breast size-enhancing herbs. A strength of the movie is the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro.
Families who see this movie should talk about the writers' answer when asked when it takes place: "Idaho." How does it seem like or not like your own experiences of adolescence? How would you list your skills? Does Napoleon seem like the kind of guy who will be able to write a movie like this just a few years later?
Families who appreciate this movie will also enjoy Gregory's Girl, Lucas, My Bodyguard and, for more mature audiences, Rushmore, Election and American Splendor.
Rating: Rental with Snacks [3 out of 5]
Honestly? I had no emotional connection to this film. I still don't know what I think. I thought all the performances were great. I thought the idea was interesting, the way it was shot interesting, and the music was neat. I think I enjoyed it - heaven knows everyone around me in the theatre did. Maybe I was empathizing with someone so hopelessly clueless about his own freakishness and I couldn't quite pull away and laugh at him. The filmmakers obviously love and hate this character, but I couldn't hate someone whose life was so self-determinedly miserable. It's a great showcase of Schadenfreude so if that's your thing, run, don't walk to the movie.
Jon Heder plays the titular misfit as the most perplexing, monotone freak, with a flair for genius in his acting. You can't hate him (even though you no doubt would have picked on him yourself in high school), you can't even feel sorry for some of the injustices that he weathers because he is such a total pill and he brings most of it on himself just by being so aggressively obnoxious. At the same time, you applaud him sticking to his personality guns and being who he is and damn everyone else who doesn't get it. No matter what, Heder's performance is one you won't soon forget. To describe it is to diminish him. Even when he is enthusiastic about something, he seems inconvenienced. His disgust with the world around him is only matched by the disgust his classmates have for him. The major focus of the film is just watching this cat navigate through episodes of victimhood at his whitebread Idaho high school.
He is supported mainly by his equally (but differently) bizarre brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). Kip is a great foil to Napoleon, and their dependence on their grandmother (barely touched upon) adds layers to their roles. Jon Gries as their uncle Rico proves that the weirdness is in the blood, whatever it is, and he is hilarious in a way that Anchorman should have been. The rest of the cast floats in and out but these three anchor the slice-of-so-called-life.
You can't really call Napoleon Dynamite a slice of life. Cowriters Jared and Jershua Hess (Jared directing) don't concern themselves much with a story arc, they mostly showcase Napoleon. When is it set? The clothes, the technology, swing between 1979 and 2000, they reminisce about back in 1982, but appear not to have lived through that era yet. Chat rooms and handheld tape recorders intermingle to make the film timeless and even more disjointed.
The pleasure comes from the aimlessness of the brothers and when the loose ends do wrap up, we're almost sorry Napoleon has less to complain about. Napoleon is a liar, but not in a malevolent way. He just wants, as the tag line says, to prove he's got nothing to prove. By being himself, and defying expectations of learning anything about how his personality makes his life harder, he negotiates a place in his life for himself, and it's an interesting journey. But see Garden State first.
Rating: **** [4 stars out of 5]
Surely, the movies have said all they have to say about nerds. If we've seen one tape-repaired pair of glasses, one slack-jawed dweeb without a clue, we've seen them all.
You'd think. But if you haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite, you don't know from nerd.
This dizzy nothing of a movie is a caricature in klutz, an Idaho indie with a droll fascination with its hero that veers from contempt to adoration. When you meet Napoleon (Jon Heder), the terminally deadpan, explosively funny stickman sight-gag, you will understand.
Napoleon is the nerd's nerd, the last kid his age to ride the bus to Preston High. Of course, he only does that when his way-cool bike is busted.
He loves to draw -- badly. He talks with his eyes closed most of the time, as if wrapped up in the myth he creates out of his life. For this Napoleon, every day is a Waterloo, promising a pummeling from the jock bullies at school. Perhaps that's because he never, ever self-censors the abuse he hurls at his tormentors, who include pretty much everyone.
"How was school?"
"Worst day of my life. Whaddaya THINK?!"
And then there's Deb (Tina Majorino), the meek social outcast who comes to his door, selling various bead crafts "to make money for college."
"I already made like INFINITY of those in Scout camp!"
Didn't we all? And that's some smooth pickup line, sport.
What makes this guy funny is the gap between how he perceives himself and how others see him. Of course, he has a shot with any girl in school. Sure, his artwork has museum possibilities. Like his nunchucks fighting or computer hacking, it's just among many "mad skillz." And he would be the perfect guy to help newcomer Pedro (Efren Ramirez) hook up with the prettiest classmate (Haylie Duff, you-know-who's sister), or run for class president.
Then, you meet his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a 40-ish, van-driving loser who never got over being the third-string high school quarterback. You hang out with his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), a mousy little Net-nerd who hooks up, online, with a Nubian goddess from Detroit. You sit in on the bogus martial arts class that Rex (Diedrich Bader) imposes on these clueless rubes. It all starts to make sense.
Writer-director Jared Hess, expanding on a short film he did with Heder and some of the other cast members, frames every shot with a sight gag in mind. Heder is all curly red hair, beanpole physique and mouth perpetually agape. He's an American Mr. Bean, pitiable and yet mean too -- the only guy who doesn't get it.
Hess seems to hate this guy and pretty much every other dork, dweeb, geek and nerd in the movie. And then he surprises us with a moment of triumph, a tiny little piece of validation for his annoyingly dense leading man.
Napoleon Dynamite manages the trick of being funny without having a story and being sympathetic without having a whiff of sympathy for anybody. It's hip and edgy without language more suitable to HBO or teenagers who need to have sex with baked goods.
And it is, start to finish, the funniest film of the summer.
Rating: **** [4 stars out of 5]
With Hollywood working overtime this summer to create alternate realities - from Harry Potter to Spider-Man 2 - the most otherworldly movie of all may be Napoleon Dynamite.
The title character doesn't wield a wand or wear tights (thank goodness), but this king of all nerds resides in a splendidly off-plumb movie world, populated with strangely likable characters that make the kids in Freaks and Geeks seem positively normal.
Compared with Napoleon Dynamite, other movies about high-school eccentrics - Election and Rushmore, for example - come off as glossy. Napoleon Dynamite succeeds in part because it's unpolished, and we can almost see the haphazard stitching that holds it together.
The movie is an exercise in absurdity that occasionally strays over the top, but pound for pound, it has more belly laughs than 10 studio-produced, star-vehicle comedies. This film has a chance to be the independent hit of the summer, judging by the enthusiastic reaction of the high school kids at a recent screening.
Director Jared Hess presents his subjects with a sensibility akin to South Park, but we still like them in the end.
Newcomer Jon Heder gives a hilarious performance as Napoleon, a put-upon Idaho teenager who lives with his older brother and grandmother and practices tetherball when he's not being bullied.
With his curly red hair, thick glasses and slow, deliberate speech, Napoleon is ignored by the popular kids. His unconventional looks are complemented by an off-putting personality, one of perpetual exasperation, that causes him to alternately whine, huff and puff and shout.
Both Napoleon and his brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell) - who spends most of his time in Internet chat rooms - engage in a fair bit of self-delusion. Asked how he spent his summer, Napoleon says he was "hunting wolverines," while the 98-pound Kip sees himself as a martial-arts master.
After Napoleon's grandma (Sandy Martin) is injured in an ATV accident, the smarmy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) shows up to keep an eye on the boys, although Kip appears to be pushing 30. Rico is desperate to relive his days as a high-school football player, pathetically filming himself throwing passes and buying a "time machine" on the Internet.
With Grandma laid up, Napoleon must feed the family llama, a side-splitting scene that ends with the youth just chucking the food over the fence.
Although he's a social outcast, Napoleon sees an opportunity to make a friend when Pedro (Efren Ramirez) transfers to school. Pedro doesn't know anybody, but he boldly asks the school's prettiest girl, Summer (Haylie Duff), to the prom.
She rejects him, but Pedro eventually takes the shy Deb (Tina Majorino), who's really interested in Napoleon. Uncle Rico and Kip, meanwhile, start selling plastic kitchenware door to door, much to Napoleon's embarrassment.
After the prom, Pedro launches a seemingly ill-fated campaign for student body president, though the popular Summer is clearly the favorite. But with Napoleon as his campaign manager and some creative tactics (at one point Pedro makes a Summer piñata and has other students bash it), he might just have a chance.
At least in the wonderful world of Napoleon Dynamite.
Rating: *** [3 stars out of 4]
First time director Jared Hess delivers this sweet and charmingly off-kilter high school comedy set in rural Preston, Idaho, his real-life hometown. The winning cast and quirky script combine for a good time at the movies and Napoleon Dynamite is the most original movie teen since Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Napoleon is a nerd with a capitol N. He has frizzy red hair, wears glasses, goofy t-shirts, hammer-pants and moon-boots. He likes to draw pictures of his favorite animal, ligers (a cross between a lion and a tiger), and enjoys solitary games of tether ball. He lives with his dune-buggy-riding grandma and 32 year old, just as nerdy, slacker brother. When grandma is hospitalized after a dune wipe-out Uncle Rico comes to stay with the brothers while she recovers. He is stuck in his glory days, trying to recapture 1982 when he almost led his football team to the state championship.
Napolean finds a best friend in recent Mexican immigrant Pedro. In his own way he is just as much an outsider as Napoleon. Shy girl Deb rounds out the geeky threesome. To save money for college she sells homemade boondoggle key chains and works at a glamour shots photography studio. The main gist of the plot concerns Pedro's run for class president with Napoleon running his campaign. He is up against popular girl Summer (played by Hillary Duff's older sister Haylie) - her slogan is 'vote for me and it will be summer all year long'.
The town of Preston creates the perfect setting. Although set in the present the town seems to be at least twenty-five years behind the rest of the world. Anyone who went to school during the nineteen-seventies or eighties should get waves of nostalgia at the look of Preston High. The open fields and distant panoramic mountains add to the sense of isolation. This is a world apart. And though at times Hess seems to be making fun of these small town people, it is never mean-spirited. For the most part he is laughing with them and not at them.
Everyone remembers that unpopular nerdy kid in school who seemed to live in his own world. The one you probably never spoke to or wondered much about. Napoleon Dynamite takes you inside the world of one such student and celebrates his geekiness. Warning: this is an unabashed feel-good flick but the cast is so vividly wrought and the humor so infectious that I wouldn't be surprised if this little movie becomes a breakout summer hit. I hope so anyway.
Grade: C+
Napoleon Dynamite premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it was snapped up by Fox Searchlight. The distributor is now attempting to stage a guerilla buzz campaign of sorts, holding countless pre-release screenings in dozens of markets, encouraging repeat viewings, holding contests, giving out t-shirts and prizes, trying not to stimulate word of mouth so much as beat it out of people. The orchestrators of this elaborate marketing ambush are clearly looking to build a sleeper hit from the ground up, starting small and crawling outward, as more and more people find out about this little obscurity that everyone just loves. Perhaps no one is thinking on a My Big Fat Greek Wedding scale -- that's impossible -- but maybe The Full Monty?
I understand the strategy but cannot abide its presumed beneficiary. Oh, it may well work -- the preview audience at my screening was nothing if not enthusiastic -- but it will be an unjust victory. Napoleon Dynamite is ostentatious and pointless, firing quirkiness out of a machine gun and saying nothing in the process. We are supposed to laugh because look how weird these people are and how oddly they act. We do laugh sometimes, surprisingly -- I must admit that many of the jokes hit the mark and that the movie doesn't feel longer than it should. But while the film pretends to have heart, its chest cavity is dark, hollow and echoey.
The obvious influence here is Wes Anderson, who has a similar penchant for filling his movies with eccentric geeks and trying to make us like and/or feel for them. Napoleon Dynamite should be particularly irritating to Anderson fans (and they are legion), as it cheapens and literalizes his approach to characters, turning an occasionally affecting filmmaking style into a series of cheap jokes. For those of us (mostly pariahs in the movie buff world) who don't see Wes Anderson as the Second Coming of God Knows Who, it's even worse, with the man's most nagging tendencies amplified to the nth degree.
The title character (yes, "Napoleon Dynamite" is the name of a person, though why that is his name is anybody's guess), played by Jon Heder, is a weird resident of the weird town of Preston, Idaho. He is so strange that one is at a loss for words to describe him -- imagine the most awkward, anti-social person in your junior high school combined with the slowest and least likable (the kind who, for example, might make up a fictitious girlfriend). He doesn't speak, he asserts -- every sentence has an emphasis on the last syllable.
His family -- indeed, it seems everyone in Preston -- gives him a run for his money in sheer inscrutability. He is raised by his grandmother, whose primary concern is a llama named Tina. His brother Kip is a somewhat frightening manchild who maintains an evidently passionate online relationship with his cyber-girlfriend Lafawnduh. When grandma is injured in an off-roading accident, in comes Uncle Rico (John Gries), who videotapes himself throwing a football and dreams of high school sports days gone by. Eventually he starts up a venture selling tupperware out of his van.
I concede that there is an impressive amount of amusing bits in Napoleon Dynamite. "Rex Kwon Do" is funny. When Napoleon intones to his friend, "You left your stuff in my locker; you'd better take it because I can't fit my nunchucks in there anymore," that's funny. It's funny when Napoleon picks up a "D-Qwon's Dance Grooves" tape and starts learning the moves (though the payoff to this isn't nearly so amusing). Hell, even the idea of Kip preparing for the Ultimate Fighting Championships -- particularly the sight gag that inevitably goes along with this -- had me chuckling.
But for what? To what end? Usually, if a movie is funny enough, I won't ask these questions (and will even get angry at those who do so), but Napoleon Dynamite is trying so desperately to become a cult hit that I couldn't give it a pass. The weirdness is for naught: the characters aren't endearing, they aren't likable, they aren't anything. This is an empty shell of a film, the likely result of Wes Anderson being replaced by a robot impostor.
Rating: * [1 star out of 5]
I know Napoleon Dynamite is the Sweetheart Indie Hit of 2004 and that audiences have fallen for it in a big way. But frankly, it's an unfunny, drifting work that borders on the inhumane and ranks as the worst film I've seen all year. As a matter of fact, Dynamite is just as nasty and condescending as a Todd Solondz film if Solondz took out all the demeaning and obscene dialogue, edited out all of the sexual material that openly mocked the film's characters, and aimed it for the Nickelodeon crowd. The fact that such a film would only be five minutes long is beyond the point. This is a film that exaggerates stereotypes (nerdy white kids, blacks, Hispanics), decorates the background with the worst in Retro nostalgia (psychidelic TrapperKeepers, acid-washed jeans), and then expects the combination to keep audience members rolling in the aisles. And from all reports, that what audience members are doing. But the laughs come from the worst part of our responses. Dynamite and its co-writer/director Jared Hess ask us not to laugh with the characters and their situations but laugh at them. Take Napoleon himself. As played by Jon Heder, he is an open-mouthed, closed-eyed anti-social who is belittled for his Goodwill clothing and for the loud wheeze he lets loose after every proclamation. I can't tell if he's exacerbated or has lung cancer. This distinction wouldn't matter to the filmmakers who don't so much create Napoleon as a legitimate character but as a template for embarrassingly "funny" bouts of public humiliation. During a class presentation, he presents a story about Japanese scientists trying to blow up the Loch Ness monster. This story has no connection to anything else in the film so it exists to make Napoleon look stupid and to subject him to ridicule. He teaches himself how to dance and ends up performing during the climatic school assembly. (As we know, school assemblies are always climatic in these type of films.) The music is lame, his dance style is spastic, and he claims to go out of his way not to get attention from his classmates. So why does he do it? Because it makes him look stupid and will subject him to ridicule. And so on and so on. Napoleon Dynamite kind of rolls in this pattern because there's no real plot to speak of. Mainly, Napoleon tries to help his new friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) get elected to Class President. Pedro must beat Summer (Haylie "Yes My Sister is Hilary" Duff) who threatens that a vote for her opponent is a vote for "illiteracy and chimichangas in the lunch room." Wow, good one Napoleon Dynamite! The racism sprinkled through the film seems like a non-issue since its setting of Preston, Idaho is supposed to represent this bland, honkey wasteland that -save for cell phones - has not escaped the late 1970's. I'm sure there's nothing in Idaho this bad, but the rules of independent cinema dictate every non-urban setting must be depressing yet quirky.
The rest of the film revolves around the equally pathetic family members of Napoleon. Kip (Aaron Ruell) is Napoleon's older, dorkier brother who runs up Grandma's dial-up time by talking in chat-rooms for hours. He meets a black woman from Detroit named Lafawnduh (or that's how he spells it anyway) who comes out to visit and ends up transforming this nerd into an Eminem-type hipster in the course of a weekend. So Kip not only plays two white stereotypes, but he delivers the valuable lesson that its okay to change your personality in order to hook up with a hot chick. There's also Rico (Jon Gries), the boy's uncle who seems to be stuck in 1982 when he played high-school football. His laments on the past and his inability to move on present the film with its best chance to develop a redeemable character. Rico succumbs to the same fate, existing primarily to get beat up by Dietrich Bader. Bader plays Rex, who teaches a martial art he calls "Rex-Quan Do". He wears parachute pants designed like the American flag and takes on Rico for trying to sell Mrs. Rex some household ornaments. Yes, Napoleon Dynamite is the type of film that thinks it can hire an actor like Bader, put him in silly pants, and this will on its own strike comedic gold. Defenders of Napoleon Dynamite will attest that claims of laziness are merely part of the film's lackadaisical charm. Fine. But this still does not answer the charge of a mean spirit. Hess has claimed that the film is not mean-spirited because Napoleon is not mean-spirited. He's a free-wheeling innocent. This is very true. But the film holds him out for so much contempt that the fact that Napoleon never gets mean only adds to his continued embarrassments. Hess, in essence, plays the Solondz card by saying that he doesn't judge the character personally so neither can the film. Unfortunately, Napoleon Dynamite speaks for itself and develops not a story or not a character. The film simply develops a big target for the audience to aim their own insecurities. The film doesn't want its characters in on the joke because the characters are the jokes. That way, both the filmaker and the audience are absolved of any guilt and can laugh without recourse. Despite all of my insecurities, this audience member isn't willing to go along with the independent film version of a wedgie. Sad. Pathetic. Unbelievable.
The Pitch:
1/2 Happiness [title of a film]
Plus
1/2 Lizzie Maguire
Equals 1 Napoleon Dynamite
Grade: B+
The world of "Napoleon Dynamite" is a wondrous place to visit, but you certainly wouldn't want to get stuck there.
It's not even a world so much as it is a city. Okay, a small town. Preston, Idaho, to be exact. And Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is the community's lankiest loser, a frizzy-haired pariah who hides behind his face-hugging glasses as he marches proudly to the beat of his own unusual drum. He's defiant and standoffish. His best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) speaks broken English. And he dances like Travolta on speed.
Director Jared Hess, at the ripe old age of 24, places a unique stamp on "Napoleon" that carries the film a great distance. He's not afraid to try a variety of stunts, and so we're treated to a llama named Tina, an online romance, a round of duck bowling and a shaved head for Pedro. Even Hess' opening credits make creative use of everyday foods.
Hess' wife, 23-year-old screenwriter Jerusha, can't keep up. She struggles to connect her husband's endless oddball ramblings into a coherent script, but only concocts two minimal storylines to follow through. In one, Napoleon asks a girl to the school dance, and in the other, Pedro considers a run for class presidency.
The trouble is, we're never laughing with Napoleon but always at him and his cronies. When Pedro wonders if the class hottie (played by current cover girl Haylie Duff) will go with him to the dance, the question is played for laughs because "Napoleon" believes no good looking girl would ever date a homely immigrant. That's mean spirited.
The Hess collaboration stays consistently amusing because it focuses on people normally left out of the camera's frame. It has quirky humor in spades, but needs a story to tie it together. Since the jokes are aimed at someone else's less-fortunate heart, you may chuckle out loud but you'll feel guilty about it immediately afterward.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 4]
Near the beginning of Napoleon Dynamite, the outlandishly geeky title character stands alone in front of his locker at his high school. Another student walks by and, without missing a step, violently shoves him against it. The frizzy-haired Napoleon, played wonderfully by newcomer Jon Heder, lands with a metallic clang, but barely seems to notice.
Whether or not you find that tiny scene funny will go a long way toward determining whether or not you'll find Napoleon funny. The story, which was written by the husband-wife team of Jerusha and Jared Hess and directed by Jared, spends most of its length chucking Napoleon up against lockers, metaphorically or otherwise, and wondering whether this is funny.
I thought it was for a while, until I realized that the same joke was going to be repeated for the length of the movie. A few minutes in, we know all the punchlines.
Even by the standards of Preston, Idaho, Napoleon lives out in the Middle of Nowhere, in a decrepit split-level home with his impossibly geekazoid older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who spends most of his time in Internet chat rooms. The boys live with their grandmother until she is injured in a dune buggy accident and their weirdo Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in to oversee the strange brood. The family keeps a pet llama out back and, whenever their supply of steak runs low, they shoot one of their cows to restock the freezer. They eat steak at every meal.
There are lots of little details like that in Napoleon Dynamite, which has the breezy feel of a Wes Anderson movie. But Anderson's genius lies in dreaming up full-bodied characters to fit into his strange stories -- he takes such care in building his characters that we're willing to follow them into any story, no matter how odd.
Hess comes close, but Napoleon Dynamite never ends up leading anywhere. This is his feature-length debut, and he's filled the cast and crew with novices, mostly fellow students and friends from Brigham Young University, where Hess made a short film called Peluca, which was the basis for Dynamite.
MTV Films is helping distribute the movie, and promotion on the network has made the largely plotless flick a cult hit among high school and college kids even before its release. And though Hess certainly registers as a talent to watch, Napoleon Dynamite never quite amounts to anything all that special.
It's saved, mostly, by Heder, a first-time actor whom Hess plucked from BYU's animation program. Fronted by thick, nerdy glasses and a surly disposition, Heder throws himself into the outcast Napoleon, and I liked the way he punctuates sentences with "Gosh!" or "ID-iot!"
Though the story mostly fails him, Heder keeps us interested as Napoleon struggles through his school days and pines after a girl named Deb (Tina Majorino). And his epic dance scene at the end almost makes all the abuse we watch Napoleon take worth it. But not quite.
Rating: *** [3 stars out of 4]
Will we ever tire of the freaks and geeks syndrome that invade the consciousness of high school existence? If we don't become exhausted by this particular genre then that's fine because the observant filmmaker behind the coming-of-age Midwestern comedy Napoleon Dynamite optimistically reminds us how refreshingly cruel it can be to relive those hectic school days (or fittingly school "daze") as the prototypical outsider.
In first-time writer-director Jared Hess's perceptively wry and self-deprecating matriculating vehicle, the moviemaking Idahoan masterfully takes a caustic stab at the local roots in his community by shining a spotlight on the extremely quirky and favorably flawed characters that provide the filtered fervor for his intimately blunt cinematic universe. Napoleon Dynamite doesn't stimulate or invite anything too distinctively that we haven't already seen before in other effective dysfunctional dramedies that were pithy and potent in its bid to paint an entertainingly drab reality of growing pains. But Hess does creatively produce a droll gem that exudes a nerdy naughtiness worthy of exploring in all its deadpan deliciousness. Invigorating in its offbeat vibes dedicated to celebrating the triumphant spirit of underdogs that look to thrive beyond their self-imposed obscurity, Napoleon Dynamite is a blast looking to explode in the flexible minds devoted outcasts and the envied in-crowd everywhere.
Hess may have concocted a summer sleeper that has the hybrid heft of a Todd Solondz flick such as Welcome to the Dollhouse mixed in with Alexander Payne's wickedly amusing Election. And believe it because that's not a couple of bad blueprints to inevitably welcome these complimentary comparisons. Napoleon Dynamite is the surreal setting where oddballs and misfits roam at will in a place that doesn't seem to have a grasp on any contemporary sense of reality. The outdated styles in clothing and hairdos is a given norm and one wouldn't be surprised if the thought of tampering with the late Lawrence Welk's bubble machine would be viewed upon as contemptuous.
The tall, red-haired gangly four-eyed hero is the title character who aimlessly walks the halls at Preston High as a dorky high school senior. Napoleon (played by Jon Heder) is the epitome of a tormented lad looking for vices to escape his dreary days of doom. When he's in positive mode, Napoleon engages in self-satisfying hobbies that include swinging his nunchucks at random or drawing wiggled creature-like shapes in his spare time. And one can imagine the exercise that the notoriously thin Napoleon receives when constantly ducking and dodging the school bullies that look to have fun at his limp-minded expense.
The domestic life of Napoleon isn't exactly anything to write home about either. He resides at home with his early thirtysomething older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) who doesn't hold any kind of job whatsoever but puts forth unnecessary energy in bickering with Napoleon at will. Plus Kip has a special interest of his own--he likes mingling on the computer as he raps with the chicks over the Internet. The simpleton siblings live with their grandmother (Sandy Martin) and when she is physically out of commission due to an accident, riff raffish Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) comes to live under the same roof. Ad nauseam, Rico unloads plenty of his glorified anecdotal recollections from 1982 and adds to the unstable household with his burdened presence.
Eventually, things start to look up at Preston High for Napoleon when he befriends a transfer student from Mexico named Pedro (Efren Ramirez). Pedro is a short, dark and hairy contrast to Napoleon's towering pale frame. Clearly, the duo is Preston High's newest sight gag--they're the Mutt and Jeff of the school grounds. They loyally stick together and take on the thrust of the flinging angst that the immediate world enthusiastically flicks at them without hesitation.
Determined to co-exist and wallow in each other's friendly company, the boys carry on and try to conduct business as usual like any other student vying for acceptance. Napoleon volunteers to help his newfound buddy Pedro run for class president. Of course we get the obligatory challenge when a hipster rival (Haylie Duff) enters the political race and causes the headache-inducing obstacles for our troubled tandem. As if Napoleon and Pedro don't have enough on their plate with trying to cope with securing the high school presidency, they look to tackle the task of rounding up dates for the upcoming heralded dance.
The uniqueness about Napoleon Dynamite is its uneventful way it sits there and lets the audience soak in its unassuming charm. There's really no penetrable plot to speak of in terms of this little film's storytelling tactics. Hess finds the quaint pleasure in humbly bringing along his characters and the sleepy surroundings they're trapped in without feeling the need to be bombastic about it in the process. Napoleon (and Hess) effortlessly promotes their hayseed utopia with an underlying wonderment that's sharply funny even though it doesn't jump out at you in the conventional sense. And do you know what the riotous thing about Hess's film that's inherently hysterical? Well, it's the odd revelation that his protagonists, namely his lanky leading man Napoleon, don't seem to be aware of their blaring shortcomings. Also, it's as if these heartland bystanders are removed from what's happening in a modern day world where turmoil rules with an iron fist. No siree, it seems that Hess's Idaho-based hazy haven has a quiet sense of tension all its own.
Heder is very exceptional as the walking drainpipe that heads the geeky goings-on with an inexplicable dosage of self-contained pride that's contagious. His exasperating mannerisms and inner conflict deems him the pity-pleaser that moviegoers occasionally champion with good cause. Heder's Napoleon is an enigma of a sympathetic soul looking to jump into the game of Life only to misplace the rulebook along the way. Heder bravely embodies his awkward alter ego as this traveling tragedy waiting to happen but this clueless beanpole is too oblivious to let this occurrence defeat him.
The supporting cast is marvelously realized and plays along brilliantly in the toned down mayhem. Ramirez is very affecting as the sidekick-in-misery Pedro who has the added weight of being a newcomer to the mellowed madness at Preston High. Ruell's shiftless cad Kip is an absolute hoot and Gries's turn as the scheming and garrulous nuisance Rico fits terrifically in Hess's topsy-turvy proceedings. Overall, the tone of the film gels perfectly with snappy dialogue and carefree humor that is as robust as a hog's muddy belly.
There's nothing really explosive about Dynamite since it's wisely restrained and goes along with its homespun flow. But as for Napoleon, he's the ideal wet firecracker for anyone to embrace with celebrated aplomb.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 4]
One of the more bizarre and original characters in recent memory, Napoleon provides some great laughs despite an uneven story that often loses steam
If you've ever watched the fantastic but short lived show Freaks and Geeks, you probably remember the character of Bill, the most outspoken member of the geek segment of the show. Now, take Bill and multiply his geekiness and awkwardness by about a hundred and you might be at the level of the character of Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder). The difference is that Napoleon is such an outcast, such a bizarre character, that he either has no interest in being a part of the in-crowd or already knows he is much too far gone to ever have a chance of assimilation.
Napoleon Dynamite is the first feature for director Jared Hess. The loosely concocted story follows the not-so-lovable loser through his day to day existence in high school and with his screwball family. Napoleon has a an older brother named Kip (Aaron Ruell) who spends the majority of his time talking to women in Internet chat rooms. I should also mention that this is a period piece of sorts, set vaguely in the 80's. I'm not sure if there really were chat rooms at that time, but I guess if there were, Kip would have been the kind of computer nerd that would have known about them. The two live at home with their grandma (Sandy Martin) until she is injured racing dune buggies over sand dunes. Yes, that's what I said. She sends in Uncle Rico (John Gries) to look after the two, despite the fact that Kip is in his early 30's. Rico is arguably the most pathetic character, a sort of Al Bundy relative who is still living out the glory of his high school football days while attempting various money-making schemes with Kip.
As Napoleon struggles through his high school existence, he befriends the school's lone Latino student, Pedro (Efren Ramirez). The two try to help each other get dates for a dance and share their interests in bicyles. They also both become friends with another outcast named Deb (Tina Majorino). They eventually find that they are both interested in Deb but, luckily, since neither character ever really displays emotions, this doesn't become too big a problem.
Napoleon Dynamite has some very big laughs, usually at the expense of our title character and things like his love of chap stick, tater tots and for drawings of his favorite animal, the Liger. That's a cross between a tiger and a lion, for the unenlightened. The laughs often feel disjointed as the story moves in every which direction, never really finding a clear focus. Napoleon, his family and friends are bizarre and watching them is often funny, but they are more funny in the same way that the crazy character skits of In Living Color, SCTV and Saturday Night Live are funny. Napoleon is missing any sort of core story or emotional depth. Napoleon himself is almost completely without emotion.
The story that is there serves only to get us to the next strange thing that someone is going to do. By the middle of the movie, this has grown pretty old. There are some more big laughs in the end that revive things, but as a whole, the film adds up to very little. Director Jared Hess has made a movie that has a lot of laughs, it just isn't memorable in any way. Napoleon is such a jackass that he seems deserving of his lot in life. It's very hard to root for a character that is completely indifferent himself. In the end, even if you've decided to portray a character lacking in emotion, it would seem that the emotion would come out of those around him, however the supporting cast is equally unemotional. In Pedro's case, he's barely human at all.
Napoleon Dynamite is fun as an oddity and features a few memorable lines that may prove more memorable than the movie itself. It's just too bad that Hess didn't find a way to incorporate a more structured story in which we could meet Napoleon. Napoleon's a weirdo, but why should I care? What makes this character any more worth watching than a train wreck? I laughed enough to at least reluctantly recommend this film when it hits the rental stores, but it could have been so much more. If Hess can move beyond the surface of his characters in his next film and place them in an interesting story, then he may wind up with a more complete, more interesting movie.
"I caught you a delicious bass," proclaims Napoleon Dynamite, by way of flirting with a flushed classmate. And when fresh fish fails to woo them, Napoleon (Jon Heder) is quick to offer crude drawings of mythical creatures or even an impromptu demonstration of his tetherball skills. A gawky social outcast, prone to exasperated shrugs and cries of "What the flip do you think?" in response to even the most benign questions, Napoleon seems almost willfully intent on making his own high school experience as unpleasant as possible.
A hit at Sundance, Napoleon Dynamite is coasting into theaters on a typhoon of hype. In an unprecedented move, its distributor has added a five-minute extra scene--typically the kind of thing you'd find as a DVD extra--as a treat for smaller-market audiences. Originally a short film entitled Peluca, the spectacle of Heder's gangly frame and orange 'fro (he towers over his classmates like a chess-club Bill Walton) make it easy to see why husband-and-wife writing team Josh and Jerusha Hess couldn't wait to spend some more time with their protagonist. Unfortunately, the thin premise is stretched to the breaking point at feature length, and even Heder's tour de spaz performance can't completely redeem a film that feels calculated for maximum eccentricity.
Stylistically, Napoleon Dynamite seems stuck in some kitschy 80's mode. John Swihart's score is a Casio homage to the cheesy synth soundtracks of that decade, and everything from crimped hair to top-loading VCRs get trotted out for out bemusement. Napoleon and his love interest Deb (Tina Majorino) are both outfitted like thrift-store aliens from the planet 80s. When Napoleon appears in moonboots, elastic-waistband pants and a teal, wolf-emblazoned t-shirt, it's clear there hasn't been a movie character of such social-bullseye proportions since Heather Matarazzo's Weiner-Dog in Welcome to the Dollhouse. Like the character in the Todd Solondz film, Napoleon chooses to return the world's hostility in kind. But Hess lacks the razor-sharp social wit that make Solondz' films so profoundly discomfiting; in its place he seems to have swallowed Wes Anderson's precious deadpan awkwardness whole. Hess' characters have the tics and absurd non-sequitur communication habits of the Tenenbaum family albeit with a farmland coarseness that's more suited to flyover country. With a hero who looks like a combination of Bill Haverchuck from Freaks and Geeks crossed with Beavis, and whose chores include feeding the family llama, Hess seeks nothing less than to build the perfect misfit.
Napoleon is a fantastic creation, but every buffoon must have his straight-man, and so it is that his only friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) is actually the film's dead(-pan) center. As the new kid in school, Pedro suffers Napoleon's bizarre offer of friendship gladly and the two set about lining up dates for a school dance and launching a campaign for Pedro's election as student body president. Out of his league but undeterred (and hilariously almost-disqualified for innocently smashing a piñata designed to look like his opponent), Pedro steals the movie in the moment he loosens his bolo tie after bombing in his presidential election speech. Not to be outdone, Napoleon saves the day for him in truly jaw-dropping fashion.
With a bunch of go-nowhere plot strands and characters just one dimension removed from cartoons, Napoleon Dynamite is easier to enjoy than to champion. And while it runs out of steam near the end, it never runs out of charm, thanks to Jon Heder's narcoleptic zeal as the title character. It's a very funny movie, although it's not always clear whether or not the jokes are at Napoleon's expense.
The title character in Napoleon Dynamite is a lanky teenage mouth-breather who wears giant 1980s eyeglasses, speaks in a bored monotone, carries fried potatoes in his pants pocket, and bemoans to his only friend that "girls want boyfriends that have great skills." He's almost as aggressively nerdy as the movie of which he's the subject.
Napoleon Dynamite finds newcomer filmmaker Jared Hess out to prove he knows as much about quirky eccentric geekitude as Todd Solondz and Wes Anderson. There are some funny bits, particularly near the beginning, and Hess's attraction to barren landscapes provides a fitting visual compliment to Napoleon's personality enigma. There's even something resembling poignance in Napoleon slow dancing to Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time. But the movie's mean condescension toward its oddball characters leaves the best of actor Jon Heder's line-deliveries with a bitter aftertaste -- made worse whenever Hess arbitrarily decides an odd scene is worth playing sympathetically. Napoleon Dynamite is no advance over the moronic appropriation of white poverty into rich kid fashion several years ago. Hess serves cruelty as hipster cred (Napoleon Dynamite is a variation of a two hour mullet joke.) The spite is evident: the movie is meant to appeal to less-extreme dorks than Napoleon so they can feel better about themselves.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 4]
I've never seen anything quite like "Napoleon Dynamite."
Quirk for relentless quirk, gesture for half-hearted gesture, it's what might happen if Todd Solondz were afraid of offending anyone. Expanding on the characters he created for his short film "Peluca," Idaho native son Jared Hess turns his satirical attention to his hometown of Preston for a patently peculiar study of life in inertia - taking us to a place we've never been, but not quite knowing what to do with us once we get there.
Co-writing the script with his wife Jerusha, the 24-year-old Hess paints (or simply visits) a landscape of suburban dystopia that's amusingly, curiously extraordinary in its banality.
Napoleon (Jon Heder) is the nerd's nerd - or more accurately, the dork's dork ("nerd" implies an intelligence he obviously doesn't have; "spaz" would denote an energy level): Tall, gangly, shock-haired, myopic and obsessed with kung fu but too lazy to actually practice it, he lives in one of those neighborless tract houses with an ATV-riding grandma (Sandy Martin) who feeds casserole to her pet llama; Kip (Aaron Ruell), a hopelessly dateless older brother who has yet to leave home at 32; and the most astonishing collection of '80s kitsch ever captured on film. Hess obviously is a child of the '80s: Kip's yen for Internet chat rooms is the only observable evidence the film is set in modern times, with the faux paneling, shag carpeting, reliance on cassette tapes as music media, and faded one-sheets for "Dragonslayer" and other sword-and-sorcery cheesefests converting the production into a veritable time capsule of 1982.
That suits Napoleon just fine. Though his environment screams to the heavens in its quiet desperation, all he can manage in protest is a tone of mild annoyance followed by the inevitable "Gosh." (Adding an exclamation point would be unnecessary exertion.) Of course, he's bullied by everyone; he befriends the new kid named Pedro (Efren Ramirez) because he's the only one who'll talk to him, even if it's mostly in Spanish; his idea of a pick-up line for the marginally cute girl (that's as good as it gets in Preston) is, "Are you drinking 1 percent milk because you think you're fat? Because you're not."
Acclimating ourselves to this nightmare on Xanax, the eccentric lifelessness is the occasion for big laughs - some of the year's best. I was instantly plunged into sense memory of years of playground horror watching Napoleon's initial terror, then (customarily mild) triumph at negotiating that most nefarious athletic foe: the tetherball. And you can't help but empathize with the guy's self-awareness of his place in high school (this one, anyway - John Hughes by way of Wes Anderson) - he needn't bother asking a girl out; no girl will consider him because he doesn't have any "skills." Gosh.
When Grandma's hospitalized in a four-wheeler accident, and Uncle Rico pulls up in his customized Merry Miler sporting a bad rug and a porn-star 'stache, that's when Napoleon's problems really begin.
Or do they? As played by an unrecognizable Jon Gries (a once-busy character actor all-but MIA since the late '80s), Rico's the most likable character - obviously intended as an archetype of the oily huckster still clinging to the faded promise of his high school glory days, but taking the high road north of cliche. Napoleon looks on him as the guy who just shows up to ruin everybody's life and eat all their steak, but in the energy he devotes to selling knock-off Tupperware and cleavage-enhancing chemicals, he tries to inspire a sense of purpose in his lethargic nephews - self-absorbed enthusiasm is still enthusiasm. In his cheeseball self-assurance, Rico is the story's sole source of vitality.
Hess has made half of a rather brilliant film here, but its acutely observed triumph is also its undoing: It's hard to lock on to oppressive tedium as your target without becoming oppressively tedious. This movie's not low-key, it's no-key.
Once the currency of eccentric novelty is spent, Hess is in trouble: Because all but one of the characters haven't generated the energy level to exactly endear themselves, their dash (more of a mosey, actually) through the gauntlet of inevitable plot contrivances is even more uninspiring - and Hess' commitment to the absurdities he creates is as half-hearted as the resigned kick Napoleon offers each time a bully shoves him against his locker. The characters "arc," I suppose, in that they experience outcomes beyond their norm, but there's no growth here in Preston, Idaho - the drudgery pays off, and in a twisted alignment, inertia has its rewards: Kip finds happiness as a direct result of indulging his chat-room obsession (and ends up as even more pathetic), Pedro lazes his way into triumph, Napoleon himself captivates the school by being an even bigger dork.
Hess' obvious intent is that we not be inspired, moved or motivated to any action beyond a benign shrug (and often a mild chuckle) by what we see - and he accomplishes it brilliantly, in the context of portraying his hometown as the most unappealing, soul-sucking municipality in the Northern Hemisphere. But it's not satisfying cinema.
I've frequently been accused of expecting too much of cinema. But isn't wit, imagination and wonder the bare minimum of what we should expect of an 86-minute investment of our time? Sorry, Jared - I won't recommend others make the same investment if you deliver all those things, but can't move me to care.
Grab a case of Red Bull, get some vitality in those veins, and show us what you can make of the obvious potential you show here. "Napoleon Dynamite" is a briefly invigorating dip in the kiddie pool of quirkiness - but if we stay in too long, all we have to show for it is pruned skin.
Somehow, I think that would be OK with Napoleon. Gosh.
Rating: *** 1/2 [3.5 stars out of 4]
"Napoleon Dynamite," which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival to much fanfare, is a quirky, one-of-a-kind comedic gem. With echoes in tone to Wes Anderson's "Rushmore," in style to Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse," and in feel to such adult-minded animated television shows as "Daria" and "The Simpsons," writer-director Jared Hess and cowriter Jerusha Hess have paid tribute to such influential filmmakers and genres without feeling the need to copy them. In telling the story of a group of lovable misfits at the bottom rung of the social ladder who somehow find a way to overcome their woes and keep marching forward, "Napoleon Dynamite" is one of the more consistently charming and original motion pictures of the last few months. And even when you aren't laughing out loud at the characters' antics and Hess' droll humor, you won't be able to stop from smiling.
In the rural, desperately uneventful midwest town of Preston, Idaho, 17-year-old Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) stands out in a crowd. Equipped with a full head of bushy red hair, almost always clad in snow boots, and with an eternal blank stare, Napoleon trudges through the doldrums of his dysfunctional home life and miserable high school experience as if he has long since accepted his lowly existence and has learned to remain indifferent to anything that comes his way. When Grandma (Sandy Martin) is injured in a sand bike accident, smarmy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) is sent to stay with Napoleon and his unemployed, chat room-obsessed 32-year-old brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), until she gets out of the hospital. As Kip teams with Uncle Rico on a corny get-rich-quick scheme and Uncle Rico begins to spread negative rumors around about Napoleon to better himself, Napoleon finds an unexpected ally in new-kid-in-school Pedro (Efren Ramirez). When Pedro decides to run for class president against the popular, snobbish Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff), he and Napoleon begin a seemingly hopeless campaign. Meanwhile, Napoleon befriends the shy Deb (Tina Majorino), a cute wallflower who might just be his perfect match.
"Napoleon Dynamite" is light on a driving narrative, but hugely likable, nonetheless, as it follows its affectionate, offbeat characters through a few months in their shoes. Certain plot threads that threaten to come off as cliches, such as the budding relationship between Napoleon and Deb or the high school campaign for president, bypass where one would naturally expect them to lead and feel brand-new because of it. Most appreciably of all, director Jared Hess (a 24-year-old making his promising feature debut) refuses to talk down to his audience by spelling out every story development. He trusts that viewers are more quick-witted than most films treat them (he would be right), and so he spares us the more commonplace scenes that go along with comedies about teenagers. For example, when Napoleon and Deb end up dancing together at the school dance, their conversation is awkward, but warm, leading to a silent reciprocal respect for each other that transcends any dialogue Hess could have cooked up. And the scene, for once, doesn't end in a kiss. Later, when Deb gets mad at Napoleon over a misunderstanding, Hess drops the usual, tired apology and make-up sequence for something that is far more quiet and honest.
More than anything, "Napoleon Dynamite" is a study in transcendent simplicity. There are a lot of broad laughs, much of which comes from Napoleon's outrageous behavior in certain circumstances, and some that are more subtle, whether it be a zinger of a one-liner or a joke that is carefully set up early on and paid off later. The portrayal of Grandma's bike accident; the funky dance Napoleon learns (from a tape called "D-Kwon's Dance Moves") that he puts to use during Pedro's election; and the gift Kip's black Internet girlfriend, LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery), gives him are just a few of the comic highlights in a movie that has countless others. No matter. All of the comedy is successfully carried off without any winks to the audience, and the characters have no idea that they are even in a comedy. That the movie is so very funny and never unveils that it knows it is the biggest key to great comedy. The second anyone shows that they know they are funny is the second the spell is lifted and it stops making one laugh. Fortunately, this never happens here.
As the outlandish title character, Jon Heder (making his major film debut) superbly carries the film without ever seeming to try. Napoleon walks through most of the film with a facial expression that resembles a fog. Maybe he has been treated badly by his peers for so long that he is worn out. Maybe he is unsure of whether or not to trust new friends Pedro and Deb at the onset because he is afraid of getting hurt. Or maybe it is the exact opposite, and he no longer is affected by rejection, which is why he willingly hangs out with them. As kindred spirit Deb, Tina Majorino is easily the standout. Once a wonderful child actor in such films as 1994's "When a Man Loves a Woman," 1994's 'Corrina, Corrina," and 1995's 'Waterworld," Majorino returns after a five year absence (her last project was 1999's television miniseries of 'Alice in Wonderland") all grown up and proving that maturity has only strengthened her abilities as an actress. Majorino is, at once, adorable and deeply touching, nearly the female equivalent of Heder's Napoleon. She makes her every moment on screen come alive.
"Napoleon Dynamite" is that rare motion picture that reminds you of a lot of other films while, at the same time, being unlike any other movie you have ever seen. Director Jared Hess makes it his own, both through the unpredictably trajectory of the subplots and the innovation with which he creates his ensemble. He also invigorates things with peculiar, winning aesthetics; many of the fashions are right out of the '70s, most of the nostalgic music selections (such as "The Promise" by When in Rome and "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper) are from the '80s, and the technology (the Internet, for example) is strictly of a present-day mentality. It is as if this nowhere town in Idaho has been stuck in a number of time warps, creating some weird sort of meshing of random decades. Most important, director Hess never seems to be laughing at his characters. Even when it starts to seem like it, Hess is quick to confirm at every turn that he really adores them, there is no question. By the time the lovely, lyrical final scene of "Napoleon Dynamite" arrives, you have no choice but to nod in acknowledgment. Finally, and once and for all, it is crystal clear why these characters deserve to be loved.
Rating: * [1 stars out of 4]
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is cast with a bunch of unknowns -- actors who are unknown for good reasons. Like a reject for a TV movie, the film is an MTV production, although why they thought it deserved a theatrical release is beyond me. I suspect that they hoped audiences would embrace it as this generation's REVENGE OF THE NERDS. The lifeless production has little story development in evidence. Basically it is just a slice of loser life at a rural Idaho high school. In this school -- you will be shocked to discover -- the dorks aren't popular and have trouble getting elected president of the student body. (Stop me if you've heard this before.) These guys with no social graces, who act like stoners without the need for drugs, also have difficulty in getting the popular girls to go out with them.
A better title for the movie might be DORK AND DORKIER, as Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) and his buddy Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a couple of DOA students, try to cope with the rigors of their high school's social structure. The script is so lame that it is unable to come up with a single credible villain to somehow mistreat our misfits and thereby gain our sympathy. Actually, we'd probably be rooting for the bad guys, if there were any.
Something like a reverse of LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, the movie makes food so unappealing, especially meat, that it could be used as a recruitment film for Vegetarians International.
In his usual deadpan style, Napoleon sums up NAPOLEON DYNAMITE best in a comment he makes about his uncle's prized home video, one of his uncle tossing football after footfall into the distance. "This is pretty much the worst video ever made," Napoleon complains in disgust. I know exactly how he feels.
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE runs 1:26. It is rated PG for "thematic elements and language" and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up.
Rating: ** [2 stars out of 4]
So deadpan a film is Napoleon Dynamite, the story and the name of a gangly high school misfit in Preston, Idaho, that I can't say whether it was intended as a character study or a comedy. When the audience roared at Napoleon's almost spastic way of slicing the air with his limp-spaghetti arms, I cringed. Were they laughing because they felt superior to this supremely alienated and awkward youth? Or because they identified with him as a social untouchable so uncool that not even the nerds will talk to him?
Napoleon (Jon Heder) resembles his family's pet llama, but with a shock of red curls. Behind Coke-bottle lenses his eyes are half-shut, as though he can't bear to face the world, and his mouth is half-open, like a gasping guppy. He subsists on tater tots (this is Idaho, after all) and Kool-Aid. He lives with his grandma, his brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), and Tina the llama. His voice is a toneless drone. Heder does a frighteningly good job of creating a character you'd cross the Sierras to avoid.
He is routinely bullied by the jocks at school and cruelly snubbed by the cheerleaders (one is played by Haylie Duff, big sis of teen idol Hilary). You could say that Napoleon has a personality disorder, but that would presume that he has a personality.
As conceived by director Jared Hess, who cowrote the film with his wife, Jerusha, Napoleon Dynamite is not a movie but a series of excruciating social indignities triumphed over in the penultimate scene.
The triumph might carry more dramatic weight were the acting not so deliberately disengaged, as though all the performers were injected with Botox so they couldn't register emotion.
While the cinematography is strikingly lit in the manner of Diane Arbus portraits, where figures seem unmoored from their environments, Arbus had obvious sympathy for her freaks and geeks. It's unclear how Hess feels for Napoleon, perhaps the only guy in Idaho who can lose at a game of solo tetherball.
Rating: ** [2 stars out of 5]
Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) has a gigantic corona of unkempt hair framing his semi-closed eyes, which peer out from behind thick glasses. Ask Napoleon how his day at school was, and his nasal, husky voice bristles with indignation: "It was the worst day of my life, what do you think?" How can you not appreciate his plight? Napoleon lives with his grandmother (Sandy Martin) and his unemployed brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), leading a non-heroic, unexplosive life.
But Napoleon is plunged into a time of conflict by the forces of nature and Grandma's all-wheel-drive accident. Suddenly forced to live with his Uncle Rico (character actor Jon Gries), Napoleon is eager to impress the young women of small-town Idaho and determined to help new kid Pedro (Efren Ramirez) win the student council presidency against the hideously popular Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff). He's also coping with the tentative affections of Deb (Tina Majorino), a shy, sweet young woman with a hilariously asymmetrical ponytail sticking out from the side of her head.
Director Joshua Hess co-wrote Napoleon Dynamite with his wife, Jerusha, and the script is long on quirk and short on plot; the film rolls about in a cloud of wheezy whimsy. Unlike Rushmore's Max Fischer, Napoleon isn't really driven in any way; he's content to live in solitude and mutter in his low voice about the thousands of injuries the world inflicts upon him. Bear in mind that for all of the script's flatness, Heder's performance in the title role is an act of pure abandon and fully committed acting. Heder has a willingness to look amazingly bad, the capacity to do his own stunts and a cockeyed physical timing that infuses every line delivery with an aggrieved, adolescent-weary fatalism -- which, as the film progresses, turns into go-to-hell determination.
But a character does not a movie make, just as quirks can't take the place of an absent story line. The characters in Napoleon Dynamite have their obsessions -- Uncle Rico with his lost, long-ago football glory, Kip with his Internet love affairs and Grandma with her pet llama and quad dirt-racing. All of this is wacky, but also a bit weary. As much as I smiled at Heder's dork-tacular work, Napoleon has the brittle, thin showiness of a sketch character, as opposed to the kind of dimensionality a film's lead role requires to make it truly engaging.
It's hard to hate Napoleon Dynamite; everyone on-screen seems to care, and care a lot, and director and co-writer Hess obviously has enthusiasm gushing from every pore. The only problem is that we've seen this movie before, and the slightly askew physical characteristics, mannerisms and oddities of the lead characters are thin stuff. Napoleon Dynamite winds up being a low-grade, wet firework of a self-conscious, self-impressed indie comedy.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 4]
The titular hero of Napoleon Dynamite is a tall, gangly, exceedingly odd boy who's always being slammed into lockers or getting hit in the face by flying objects or suffering some other sort of humiliating indignation (even his pet llama treats him with disdain). A senior at Preston High School, Napoleon goes around drawing sketches of ligers and unicorns, or babbling about the Loch Ness monster and nunchuks. His favorite sport is tether ball (a perfect game for loners), his wiry red hair always looks as if he just got out of bed, and his signature item of clothing is a pair of oversized moon-boots -- a natural accessory for someone so relentlessly strange, he might as well be a visitor from another planet.
Nerds are a familiar fixture in movies about high school, but in this wry, deadpan comedy, Napoleon is just one in a procession of weirdos. Napoleon Dynamite marks the debut of director Jared Hess, who also co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Jerusha, basing it on people he knew while growing up in tiny, flat Preston, Idaho, where the film is set. Hess' attitude toward the town and its people is reminiscent of Alexander Payne's portrayal of Omaha in About Schmidt: Often, it's hard to tell if Hess genuinely likes his characters or is simply out to mock them.
The answer is a little of both. Napoleon Dynamite has no problem mining laughs out of Napoleon's 32-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), an unemployed homebody who brags about the number of hours he spends talking to girls in online chat rooms; or Napoleon's creepy, toupee-loving uncle Rico (Jon Gries), who buys a time machine on eBay so he can travel back to 1982 and relive his high-school football days; or even Napoleon's sole friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the school's only Hispanic, a slow-witted mouth-breather running for student council president.
But the movie never looks down on its eccentric characters: Hess simply regards them, with amusement but without judgment, as they revolve around Napoleon, alternately stoking and pacifying his inner geek-rage. Like David Gordon Green's George Washington, Napoleon Dynamite is more interested in behaviors and its small-town milieu than an actual story. What little plot there is -- the election, a homecoming dance, the door-to-door selling of Tupperware products -- unfolds slowly and episodically, like life in Preston itself. Occasionally, time really does seem to stand still.
As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation. Played by newcomer Jon Heder (a Brigham Young University student and former classmate of the director), Napoleon walks around with his shoulders thrust forward and his head pointing down, like a defensive tackle poised to ward off whatever new disaster life is preparing to throw at him. Napoleon is often cranky and irascible, like a misfit unhappily resigned to the cosmic joke being played on him.
But Heder also lets us see the hopeful, fiercely independent soul lurking inside. When Napoleon compliments a girl by telling her she should drink whole milk instead of skim, or stands in front of the entire high school and performs an uninhibited, herky-jerky dance to Jamiroquai, you get the feeling that while this formidably ugly duckling may never get his own storybook transformation, he'll still turn out all right.
Rating: Thumbs Up
EXCERPT: "I'm cracking up already thinking about that uncle again, who is obsessed with 1982."
EXCERPT: "While these kinds of stories often drown in their own eccentricity, the cast keeps the film afloat."
Grade: B
"Napoleon Dynamite" is one of those rare, small independent films that finds a mainstream audience. Crudely and cheaply made, this film is nonetheless doing well at the box office all over the country. The reason? Simple, it's funny. It has a surrealistic, but effective story loaded with interesting characters and good sight gags.
The title character, Napoleon Dynamite, is played by Jon Heder. He also appeared in a short film, "Peluca," which was directed by Jared Hess, who wrote and directed "Napoleon Dynamite." Hess is from Preston, Idaho, where this story is set. He clearly understands how small rural towns work. Few comedies are set in rural Idaho, or rural anywhere, for that matter. This unusual setting gives the film an exotic quality. The themes of the movie are universal, however. It is a coming-of-age movie about two outsiders, Napoleon, and his friend, Pedro (played by Efren Ramirez) who try to get dates for the dance and win the school election. The plot is more like a series of blackout sketches that fit loosely together. The editing seems almost haphazard. What makes it work is character development. For trivia buffs, Hilary Duff's sister, Haylie Duff, plays the part of Summer, the school's diva, and Pedro's competition for school president.
In addition to Napoleon and Pedro, Napoleon's nerdy, stay-at-home brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), his ex-jock wanabe Uncle Rico (Jon Gries of "Northfork"), his would-be girlfriend, Deb (Tina Majorino) are all quirky, but well-defined characters. That's four more characters than a lot of recent Hollywood films managed to develop. Uncle Rico wants to use a time machine to go back to his high school years and win the big game. He's the kind of guy that even if he could go back in time, he still couldn't get things right. All of these characters, however, show a lot of optimism about the future. They all have faith that things will get better for them. Uncle Rico thinks his get-rich-quick schemes are going to work. Pedro thinks he will be elected class president, and Napoleon just believes in himself. This optimism is refreshing compared to the pessimism in most films, including independent films, that are being made today. In addition to being optimistic, the characters in the film are also uncompromising. The film is also uncompromising in the way these characters are depicted. These characters never conform, and neither does the film.
Good use of location photography is made in the film. One scene showing some boys on a lunch break at a chicken farm shows the stark, treeless Idaho landscape in the background. Similar backgrounds are shown in several other scenes in the film. One scene shows Uncle Kip camped out in the middle of nowhere. Some of these scenes tend to heighten Napoleon's sense of isolation from the rest of the world. It is also another way of showing these characters are not intimidated by the world's massive indifference to them.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
Napoleon Dynamite, a quirky, funny film directed by Jared Hess in which the title character, an awkward, gangly, Idaho teenager, seems to be genetically incapable of social conformity, is the rare comedy that has an overabundance of material desperately looking to wrap itself around a plot (usually it's the other way around, with a one-joke idea stretched and distorted beyond recognition by a tired storyline). But Hess, who co-wrote this film with his wife Jershua, has strung together an almost endless supply of original jokes and gags into what could easily pass for an A-list standup routine.
As it is, Napoleon Dynamite is full of laughs, and if they had been attached to some kind of story, we'd be quick to crown Dynamite as the latest and newest classic comedy (for its part, the film has apparently, within a month of its theatrical release, attracted a fan club willing to populate midnight showings to lend the film cult status). Surely, those who do see this smallish, independent film will be quoting dialogue long afterward.
Napoleon (a perfectly cast and very capable Jon Heder) is the star of the show, a teenage resident of Preston, Idaho, who struggles through life daily. He is not, by any measure, a normal teen: he has a curly mop of blond hair; oversized glasses; a husky, mildly annoyed deadpan; and a gaze that extends into a vague middle distance, usually somewhere on the floor about four feet in front of him. He likes mystical animals (his favorite is something called a Liger, which, he explains, is like a lion and a tiger, mixed), he fancies himself proficient with "numchucks," enjoys playing tetherball (though mostly by himself), and his only friend (apparently) is Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez), a transfer student from Mexico. He also has a secret crush on a shy girl named Deb (Tina Majorino).
The plot, if it can be called that, follows roughly a year's worth of Napoleon's adventures, beginning with the arrival of Napoleon's uncle, Rico (Jon Gries), after his grandma winds up in the hospital following an accident with a dune buggy -- which, naturally, is good for a laugh. Rico is permanently stuck in 1982, and when he's not endlessly reminiscing about his failed attempt to win the high school football state championship that year, he's recruiting Napoleon's brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) as part of his door-to-door Tupperware sales team.
Kip is possibly an even bigger loser than Napoleon -- at age 31, he spends hours on the Internet talking long-distance to his girlfriend, LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery), who lives in Detroit, and is, predictably but hilariously, as large and black as Kip is small and white.
Not in recent memory has such an amazing and broadly enjoyable cast of screwball characters been assembled for a single film; while each of them defies reality, there is that sliver of plausibility that exists with the movie's small-town, Idaho setting.
But Hess hardly gives the viewer time to ponder these questions; the film is structured in 30- or 60-second anecdotes that usually end with some kind of punch line. In one scene, Uncle Rico, who, it should be said, is something of a bully, throws a piece of steak at Napoleon and nails him square in the face. "Idiot!" retorts an irritated Napoleon -- his usual comeback, but one that in Uncle Rico's case is unfailingly accurate: Rico, inspired by his steak-tossing abilities, wonders about the possibility of time travel, and whether he could go back to 1982 for another shot at the state football title. With Kip's help, he acquires a "time machine" over the Internet, though this turns out to be nothing more than a self-electrocution device.
The movie builds up to a climactic race for student council president, in which Napoleon's friend Pedro decides to run against Summer (Haylie Duff, pop star Hilary's older sister), the most popular, if not exactly the brightest, girl in school (her campaign slogan: "Vote for me, and it will be summer all year long!"). The movie takes a slightly roundabout path to Pedro's inevitable victory, but more entertaining are some scenes along the way: in one, Pedro rigs up a piñata that looks like Summer, and in another, Pedro's older and much larger brothers offer protection to all the geeks and nerds in their school in exchange for votes.
Indeed, there is hardly a single scene in Napoleon Dynamite that isn't funny. The cast and crew deserve equal credit -- the deadpan writing is spot-on, while the cast is perfectly matched to the characters. Though it helps to watch this movie in the context of the independent festival fare that it is, it is palatable from almost any perspective -- presumably, the homegrown feel might even appeal to Idahoans themselves.
It is true, however, that you have to be something of a sadist to enjoy watching Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon stands out like a sore thumb, and pays the price for it (continually). But this misfit, and his stubborn refusal to play by the rules, is a near-brilliant comic creation -- and if you can get over that niggling guilt about laughing at his antics, then you'll find Dynamite is exactly that.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
He plays himself at tetherball, has a pocket full of tater tots to snack on, a "Pegasus Crossing" sign on his bedroom door, and he comes on to young women with a decidedly unusual line: Spotting a cutie drinking milk in the school cafeteria, Napoleon Dynamite asks, "I see you're drinking 1 percent -- is that because you think you're fat?"
A Romeo he may not be, but Napoleon is a strangely endearing personality, particularly since he's played by Jon Heder, a young actor who is not afraid to give himself over to sheer geekiness. Although "Napoleon Dynamite," co-written and directed by Jared Hess, isn't much more than an excuse to explore the wacky world of Napoleon and his associates, it's probably going to turn Heder into some kind of star; anyone who's willing to go through an entire film outfitted with a flattened-out Afro, a voice that's somewhere between a whine and a bray and a pair of enormously unattractive glasses deserves at least a cult following.
It's easy to envision "Napoleon" eventually becoming a staple of college DVD parties, in the same way that "Office Space," "High Fidelity" and "Bottle Rocket" have. Hess' brand of comedy is generally understated -- sometimes you might wonder if certain scenes were actually intended to be funny -- yet accessible. Picture what might have resulted if "The Royal Tenenbaums" had been a small-town family, or if "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" had been pumped up with a little more comic juice, and you've got some idea of what to expect.
A high school student who's not about to be anybody's first choice for the "most likely to succeed" award, Napoleon lives a life that's shockingly unexciting; for Napoleon, participating in the Happy Hands Club and performing a sign-language interpretation of Bette Midler's "The Rose" qualifies as a high time. His delusional brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), aspires to be a cage fighter, even though Napoleon reminds him that "you have the worst reflexes of all time." His uncle, a failed former football player named Rico (Jon Gries), sells cheap knockoffs of Tupperware and highly questionable herbal concoctions that he claims will increase bust size.
Seeking some purpose in the world, Napoleon signs on as campaign manager for the school presidency campaign of his friend Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez). But perhaps Napoleon could do a better job helping Pedro with his public speaking: "If you vote for me, all your wildest dreams will come true," Pedro tells voters, in the same way you might say, "Sorry, honey, but your hamster died this afternoon."
There's not much plot development -- "Napoleon" does not have any of the acidic satire of the similarly themed "Election," nor does it give itself over to "She's All That"-style teen romance, although it occasionally seems to be drifting in that direction -- but Heder provides a reasonably steady flow of laughs and several happy surprises as well, including a delightful visit from Kip's "internet girlfriend" and the sight of Napoleon doing a memorably misguided shuffle to the tune of Jamiroquai's pulsating "Canned Heat."
Entering the company of Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder), you know you've met this year's top choice for Hipster Halloween Costume. A teenager living a life of nonexistent expectations in rural Idaho, he's an unforgettable mess. His gangly body ends in a head that's topped with an unsightly red Afro and set off by fashion-backward eyeglasses that Lenscrafters would refuse to sell. When he's exasperated, his asthmatic voice becomes a sigh that sounds like steam escaping. In denial of his microscopic status at his high school, Napoleon maintains his self-esteem by reciting a resume of fictitious personal "skills" he thinks will attract the ladies. Like bowhunting. And the proper use of nunchucks.
Did I say "mess?" I meant "hero."
The triumphantly uncool Napoleon has the audience in his back pocket throughout this weirdly compelling picture (by director/co-writer Jared Hess). And it's a good thing he does, because the film that bears his name isn't about to get by on plot. Napoleon's hilariously mundane misadventures take the form of hit-and-run set pieces, glued together about as tightly as the deleted scenes on a DVD. The film is thus already being dismissed in some circles as having no story, but that's an oversimplification. Each seemingly disconnected episode is really another step on Napoleon's path to acceptance (as opposed to the illusion of it). How he gets there has important consequences for everyone in his world, including his terminally sedate Mexican buddy, Pedro (Efren Ramirez); his Internet-addicted older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell); and their Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), who's stuck in a state of nostalgic yearning for his own personal heyday: 1982.
It's as if John Hughes fashioned one of his teen comedies solely around the supporting characters, then handed the project to a filmmaker who could be immeasurably more sympathetic to their dreams and desires. (Only Diedrich Bader's role as a boorish martial-arts instructor feels like a caricature.) Poignant even when in the throes of slapstick -- clumsy physical altercations abound -- the movie puts a refreshing spin of awkwardness on situations that should be utterly played out. There's a big school dance, an all-important election for student-body president and, of course, a few heart-palpitating homeroom crushes and bitter rejections.
What sets it all apart is the movie's lunatic calm, its cleareyed view of a residential wasteland that looks like grotesquerie ... until you realize that nothing in the film lacks a real-world precedent. Look closely at one interior shot, in which a family's living room is decorated in photographic portraits of their uncomfortably posed kids. You knew somebody who had those pictures. And you probably knew someone like Napoleon, who's so out of the loop that he thinks he can mouth off to the very bullies who regularly body-slam him into the school lockers.
Director Hess obviously wants you to reflect that you may have been that kid yourself. But you were lucky if you saw your alienation through the way Napoleon does. In his most honest moments, he has to acknowledge that he's a zero in every social equation, yet he never doubts that he's entitled to be happy. That message has resonance far beyond the film's subject or its genre; with such a pearl waiting to be plucked, how much of a story does one really need?