Rating: $8.00 out of $10.00
IN SHORT: The funniest, sex and drug-free high school comedy we've ever seen. That's compliment. A big one. [Rated PG for thematic elements and language. 86 minutes]
We stopped paying attention to the various film festivals years ago. Our reasons, stated here and there over the last ten years were simple: we had enough of pretentious writing and/or directing and/or overacting and the overwhelming ego of directorial superiority that seemed to go along with making the cut as a Festival Selection. Besides, the really good movies that emerged from any Festival -- and we don't include the films that managed to land a studio distribution deal before show time -- were few and far between.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it's Few and Far Between Time.
With the exception of gone in a flash cameo by Drew Carrey co-star Diedrich Bader there's not a name attached to Napoleon Dynamite in any capacity that would make the little voice in your head start scratching itself thinking "there's something about this film that makes me want to see it..." That is the reason critics like the cranky old gnome who slaves over these words exist. We are the pigs rooting out the truffles; the hounds tracking down wanted quarry; the writers saddled with a need to write with too many metaphors because we haven't come up with any new way to rave or dis a film in years.
So, let's get to the point. Technically, Napoleon Dynamite has all the look of a collegiate production. It's adequate, at best. In keeping with that, there is no one in the cast familiar enough to the general public that you'd lay down your money for a look see. What Napoleon Dynamite should have going for it, and we're going to help start the ball rolling here and now, is that wonderful thing that marketers dream of called "word of mouth." Napoleon Dynamite is a film set in an average high school that ignores all the done to death conventions of the "high school genre" movie. The kids we meet in this story aren't obsessed with getting their first roll in the hay. They just want a date to the school dance -- all the more difficult when the clique of kidlets at the center of the story are the social outcasts of the Class of 2004.
Begin with our "hero," Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder). Though the film falls way short on getting certain background details into its subtext, it's safe to assume from context that Napoleon is a junior at Preston (Idaho) High School. His parents aren't on the scene for reasons that are unclear. Grandmother Dynamite (Sandy Martin) has been watching over Napoleon and his 32 year old unemployed, Internet chat room surfing brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). Napoleon hasn't managed to corral a lot of friends during his run in the local school system, but he's more than eager (in a gentle 'I don't have anything else to do' kind of way) to befriend the new kid from Mexico Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and neighbor Deb (Tina Majorino), who's trying to raise money for college by selling key chains door to door.
When Grandma temporarily vacates the scene due to a dune buggy accident -- don't ask -- Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) leaves his van and moves in to the Dynamite house, where his presence isn't exactly needed. As far as Rico is concerned, the phones are free and there's plenty of steak in the freezer so life is good while he figures out the next get rich quick scheme. Those schemes will eventually pull Kip into his circle -- Kip's Internet girlfriend LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery) is on her way from Detroit and the stud must be able to represent, dontcha know...
Most of Napoleon's life would be pretty grim by most other standards. He gets beat on by the jocks, takes martial arts instruction from dojo master Rex (Diedrich Bader) and has a set of "num-chucks" stashed in his locker. Most of the time, though, he's doodling pictures of fantastical creatures -- a lion/tiger crossbreed he calls "liger" -- and damsel in distress scenes. In short, Napoleon is a typical geek teen. Napoleon is more concerned about two other things. First, how to get a date for the dance, since his obvious "target" will be snatched out from beneath him. Second, how to manage Pedro's run for School President against the most popular girl in the school, Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff).
That's all you need to know, story-wise. The strength of Napoleon Dynamite is in its cast and script. We can say it until we're blue in the face, and we probably are, Napoleon Dynamite is one of the funniest films of the year. It certainly is the funniest with a no-name cast and that being written, props go out to all the onscreen folks, who do a very good job.
On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Napoleon Dynamite, he would have paid . . .
$8.00
Find it. Pay for it. Laugh out loud.
Grade: B-
Former Brigham Young University student Jared Hess is the 24-year-old co-writer, along with his wife Jerusha, of Napoleon Dynamite, who makes his directing debut in this offbeat comedy about an eccentric nerdy high schooler, the titled character, trying to survive being an outsider in his bland small-town of Preston, Idaho (Hess's hometown). Napoleon is a strange kind of hero, who is not a particularly likable sort of kid but who sort of grows on your soft side with his weird humor and the way he outrageously walks around school with a faraway look, wearing moon boots and wildlife T-shirts. He acts like a simpleton locked into his own private dream world, with his animal sketches being his only apparent talent--his favorite animal which he calls a "liger," is a cross between a lion and a tiger. The loner spends his spare time trying to perfect his tetherball game, feeding his pet llama and performing hand signal sing-alongs with the Happy Hands Club.
The laid-back, bespectacled, deadpan expressioned, gawky and frizzy haired Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), lives with his secretly wild motorbike riding grandma (Sandy Martin) and his 32-year-old dominating nerdy brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) in the desolate desert town of Preston. Kip is having a chat room Internet romance with Detroit ghetto gal LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery). When granny goes down in a motorbike riding accident in the sand dunes and is hospitalized, sleazy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) is recruited to watch her grandchildren. Rico's a frustrated ex-jock who is trying to relive his almost glorious high school football days back in 1982 (the film seems retro in its 1980s fashion look, though it's apparently set in the present). The obnoxious Rico lives out of his Dodge van and makes a living selling plastic Tupperware-like food storage containers, and when that doesn't pan out his next get-rich-quick scheme is selling herbal breast enhancements. Rico is so obsessed with the past that he videotapes himself throwing a football for accuracy and buys a time machine hawked on the Internet, hoping to return to his high school gridiron days to parlay his revived football prowess into an NFL career.
When the shy new Mexican immigrant student Pedro (Efren Ramirez) enters Preston High School, Napoleon becomes his best friend. The two outsiders scheme to get dates for the upcoming school dance. Pedro when rejected by the most popular and attractive girl in the school, Summer (Haylie Duff), successfully hits on the geeky girl Napoleon was about to ask but never got around to--Deb (Tina Majorino). She's a timid photographer, who tries earning money selling flashy homemade key chains by going door-to-door. When Summer runs for school president, Pedro emerges as the unlikely candidate opposing her. Napoleon puts his heart and soul into getting the nervy but slightly retarded Pedro elected, performing as a breakdancer to win himvotes. At this point the incoherent story starts wearing really thin and all the jokes directed at the freakish Napoleon character start feeling overworked (in any case, the jokes were never different from the geek-genre conventional ones). The uncomfortable humor comes from laughing at Napoleon and the other misfits, with the grossest yuks coming when the school bullies repeatedly slam Napoleon into the lockers. But the filmmaker seemed to have second thoughts about such cruel humor and tried to temper it with some affection for his loser hero. This effort to make Napoleon into a more tender character seemed disingenuous, and the contrived results come without being earned.
There's also a false ending to contend with, as after the final credits roll by there's an unnecessary five minute skit about Kip's marriage to the mannish looking LaFawnduh. The supposedly happy ending takes away from the shoestring budgeted indie's initial edginess. In this one-joke idea for a film, I never got the impression the filmmaker cared what happened to any of his characters. But by eventually playing it PC safe, we are led to believe that things will work out just fine in the Western rural wasteland for dead-beat Napoleon and all the other misfits (when all prior evidence seemed contrary). I think this idea of having everyone's wildest dreams come true, which is the feel-good message left, is as unlikely a scenario as Pedro being elected Preston's school president. This film is more about scoring points over Jon Heder's unique performance than in telling a meaningful story. If you dug the performance, then you probably also liked the film. I did like Heder's performance, but only up to a point. I was never able to feel comfortable with the film's lack of social consciousness or the way it crassly presented the misfits. It didn't have the same integrity for the misfits or concern for social issues Todd Solondz had in Welcome to the Dollhouse, a film it most closely resembles.
Grade: C-
EXCERPT: Here's a key to nerd-chic scriptures: Everyone comes from somewhere, unfabulous as that place may be. And many establish their updated identities at new addresses by laughing at the places they pray to God they've left safely behind. Sometimes dorkdom is a function of geography ("Fargo"), sometimes of mind-set (TV's "Freaks and Geeks"). But whatever its genesis, geekitude requires wounded anger ("Welcome to the Dollhouse"), confident style ("The Royal Tenenbaums"), or bleak compassion ("Ghost World") to advance the attitude from that of fashion statement to affecting art. At this point in the cinema of psychological slacking, we ought to demand more...
Rating: *** [3 out of 5 stars]
One of the overarching jokes in "Napoleon Dynamite," the odd, amusing debut of the 24-year-old filmmaker Jared Hess, is that such a grandiose, explosive title should be attached to such a small-scale, deadpan film. Napoleon Dynamite is also the name of the movie's awkward, frizzy-haired hero, a high school student in Preston, Idaho, whose world-conquering potential is invisible to everyone but him.
Napoleon, played by Jon Heder with unnerving conviction, is a gangly mouth-breather whose affectless eccentricity could easily be mistaken for simple-mindedness. "He's a tender little guy," says his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a sad, sleazy fellow who drives around in an orange-and-brown Dodge van selling plastic food-storage containers. This is about the kindest thing anyone says about Napoleon, who is taunted, harassed and laughed at in school. It is also the truest, though it may take you a while to appreciate Napoleon, and to grasp that the movie's attitude toward him is ultimately more tender than cruel.
Mr. Hess grew up in Preston, which he films as a collection of lonely houses dropped in the middle of an empty landscape of mountains and rangeland, and his filmmaking style is well suited to the rhythms of small-town Western life. His mockery of the local quirks and delusions is grounded in both affection and impatience, and his dry, barbed visual and verbal jokes reflect the humor of a place where time doesn't move too quickly and people don't talk much.
The story takes shape slowly. Napoleon lives with his brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), their boisterous grandmother and a bored llama. When Grandma cracks her coccyx in a motorbike accident, Uncle Rico comes to baby-sit, even though Kip, the elder brother, is 32. Meanwhile, Napoleon befriends a shy Mexican boy named Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and an amateur photographer named Deb (Tina Majorino) who sells garish handmade key chains door to door.
Rico, who at one point purchases a time-travel machine over the Internet, is obsessed with the year 1982, when he lost his chance at high school football glory. ("We could have won State.") Judging from their clothes and hair, Rico and the other residents of Preston are still living in his favorite year. If not for the occasional reference to the Internet (where the frail and flighty Kip searches for love and, remarkably, finds it), you might mistake "Napoleon Dynamite" for an exercise in fond, cringing nostalgia, doing for '82 what Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" did for '76.
Of course, Mr. Hess and his 23-year-old wife, Jerusha, with whom he wrote the screenplay, are much too young to remember 1982, and the nostalgia in "Napoleon Dynamite," which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, is the kind that people in their 20's, in whatever decade, inevitably begin to feel for high school.
Mr. Hess, who studied film -- and met most of his cast and crew -- at Brigham Young University, has a lot of talent and also a lot to learn. The performances, even those by trained actors like Mr. Ramirez and Ms. Majorino, have the hesitant, blinking opacity that some directors look for in nonprofessional casts. Their awkwardness is charming, and part of the point of the movie, but it also makes for some dull stretches and thwarts your ability to regard the characters with sympathy rather than mere curiosity.
At the end, Mr. Hess turns his meandering assembly of quiet observations and slapstick inventions -- which, at their best, suggest a combination of Tod Solondz and Bill Forsyth -- into an unconvincingly uplifting fairy tale. Napoleon's triumph is sure to please audiences who need to forgive themselves for laughing at his earlier misfortune, but it comes a little too easily, and it compromises the film's most interesting quality, which is its stubborn, confident, altogether weird individuality.
Rating: [Positive]
EXCERPT(?): "With wit as dry as the chapped lips of a constant mouth-breather, Napoleon Dynamite finds moments of painful reserve even in slapstick."
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 out of 4 stars]
Cracked? Bent? These and similar adjectives will do in describing this comedy about a high-school misfit (Jon Heder), thinking big and living small beneath spacious Idaho skies. Director-co-writer Jared Hess has a flair for deadpan slapstick, but you may feel a little guilty for laughing so hard. With Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell, Tina Majorino, Efren Ramirez and Haylie Duff. 1:26 (some mildly off-color humor, comic violence). At select theaters.
A colleague who saw "Napoleon Dynamite" six months ago at the Sundance Film Festival describes it as a typical off-the- wall festival entry that induces tears-down-your-face laughter in Utah's thin-air reaches. It's only closer to sea level, he says, that you wonder, in retrospect, if it was as funny as you remembered.
I happen to think that few things are ever as funny as you remember -- unless it's Ted Knight on "Mary Tyler Moore" or a Chuck Jones "Three Bears" animated short. I don't think "Napoleon Dynamite" is quite as funny as those entities. But I don't think sea level has much to do with it. Maybe if I weren't as far removed from high school as I am now, I'd be much more into the movie's warped depiction of teenage wasteland. I can remember feeling the anger and restlessness that "Napoleon Dynamite" conveys. I just don't remember being this gratuitously hard on everyone around me.
Rookie feature director Jared Hess is hardest of all on his eponymous hero, who shares one of Elvis Costello's many stage names and, as with the younger Costello on stage, moves through the dreary terrain of rural Idaho with ungainly, unfocused rage. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is tall, bespectacled, sports a mop of tangled, orange hair and speaks fluent whine. He's the kind of human doormat who's just asking to get slammed against a high school locker for no good reason other than occupying space.
At home, he has an older brother named Kip (Aaron Russell), a smaller, wormier species of geek, who spends most of his time chatting online with his "soul mate." When their grandmother is incapacitated after taking her dune buggy for an ill-advised flight, the brothers are looked after by Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a polyester-clad jock manque who's hustling plastic bowls and breast enhancement to the community at large.
Things aren't altogether arid for Napoleon, who has found communion of sorts with shy neighbor Deb (Tina Majorino) and new kid at school Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who's running an uphill campaign for class president against Summer (Haylie Duff), Cheerleader-Queen of the Cool Kids.
Some of these elements have become standard for hip youth comedies of recent vintage. (One difference: You won't hear anyone use an expletive harsher than "Dang!") Still, Hess knows what he's doing when it comes to timing out his sight gags and spacing out his protagonist's glandular outbursts. And a thin layer of sweetness seeps through the astringent mockery toward the end. Hess has a heart almost as big as his spleen.
Grade: B-
Cinema's never-ending fascination with the geek continues apace in NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, a character study of an Idahoan teen whose every move is out of step with his surroundings. That doesn't mean he doesn't find a groove -- with his retro glasses, out of control frizztop, overused slang, and fascination with other worlds (including fantastical animals and urban street dancing), he's one of the most fascinating outcasts since Harold and Maude sauntered their way across the big screen.
Trouble is, Harold and Maude were going someplace; their story had a direction. Napoleon, for all of his detail (played with mirthful conviction by Jon Heder), seems to get lost in mundanity, passing through a life filled with quirks but not interest. What emerges is a character that is endlessly fascinating, trapped in a film that isn't at all. From the very first moments of the opening credits of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, you know there's going to be kitschy style aplenty. And director Jared Hess doesn't disappoint -- although clearly set in modern times (cellphones are everywhere), the vibe is circa 1982, with a costume and production design (and a soundtrack) meant to evoke the Reagan Years.
Napoleon is the younger of the Napoleon brothers, raised by their grandmother (Sandy Martin); after she has an accident, Napoleon and his chat room-addicted brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) are temporarily left under the dubious care of Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), an overcompensating former jock who still relives his long-past glory days. School isn't going too well for Napoleon, either -- a girl he kind of likes, Deb (Tina Majorino), is going to the prom with his only friend, Pedro (Efren Ramirez). You can see that plot isn't really NAPOLEON DYNAMITE's strong point. Really, Hess and his co-screenwriter (and wife) Jerusha Hess are interested in the details of rural/suburban existence, the quirky idiosyncrasies that place us apart from one another.
But really, it's unclear as to whether we are laughing with Napoleon...or simply at him. The best teen comedies allow us a sort of personal transference, a vicarious understanding of the characters' trials and tribulations because, hey, we were all there once, right? We can see ourselves in their experiences. In NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, few will empathize with Napoleon's foibles. Yes, almost everyone felt nerdy in high school, everyone felt out of sync. But this isn't about you...it's about the guy who sat next to you in biology, stuffing food in his pants and drawing unicorns. The guy who made you feel better -- because at least you weren't that nerdy. This is the Nerd Alpha/Omega, the guy who played Dungeons and Dragons...by himself. This is the apotheosis of geekdom. We can all relate to a degree, but at some point, Napoleon passes all of us by, and our ability to share in his experience dissipates.
Despite its plot problems, however, you can't do much better for a character study; NAPOLEON DYNAMITE features a half-dozen of the most original characters you'll ever see. Heder gives Napoleon a slowly fomenting vitality -- not a joie de vivre, exactly, but locomotion driven by the excitement in day-to-day life. Napoleon makes snap decisions and lives by them; Heder, magnificently, plays these with a decisiveness that gives Napoleon a refreshing vibrancy. Ruell gives Kip both a bravado and wimpiness that makes for witty contrasts, and Ramirez charges the entire room by having Pedro suck the energy out of every scene. (He gives new meaning to the phrase deadpan delivery.) Perhaps best is Majorino, the child star of Waterworld and Corrina Corrina, who finds a textured vulnerability as the put-upon Deb.
And if you should see NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, make sure you're fully alert for its climactic moment. As a part of his election for school president, Pedro is surprised to learn that all of the candidates were expected to prepare a musical skit for the school assembly. Having nothing prepared, Pedro succumbs to depressed defeat. It's up to our hero Napoleon to save the day, and he does so in a bogglingly spectacular fashion, to the music of Jamiroquai's infectious dance song "Canned Heat." It must be seen to be believed, and I don't say that very often. You may feel a sense of incompleteness when the credits roll, but NAPOLEON DYNAMITE's characters are almost a wonder to behold.
Rating: * 1/2 [1.5 stars out of 4]
There are so many reasons to like "Napoleon Dynamite." First of all, it's funny, smart and it's got one of the best character names in the lead title character I've seen in film for a good number of years. And let's not forget the skills. Maybe that's one you've got to watch the film to truly appreciate. But the most disappointing thing about "Napoleon Dynamite" is that it chooses to make its lead character the butt of its jokes, inviting the audience to laugh at him rather than with him. The choice ends up weakening Napoleon's time in the spotlight, and we're not sure if, at the end, we're clapping out of joy or condescension.
Written and directed by Jared Hess partly based on his own experiences of growing up in the tiny rural town of Preston, Idaho, the film follows high school senior, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder). Napoleon lives with his grandmother and his unemployed 31-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who spends his days on chatrooms looking for love. When his grandmother hurts herself in a quad runner accident, "Uncle" Rico (Jon Gries) moves in to look over the two boys until grandma recovers. With his red afro and fondness for moon boots, Napoleon already has trouble fitting in but things are getting better thanks to his new best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez). But when Uncle Rico starts selling herbal breast enhancements to his schoolmates' moms, he threatens to send Napoleon back to lonerville. Pedro and Napoleon decide to put it all on the line when they run for Student Body President against the school's most popular girl, Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff).
One of the things that sets the film apart from other teen films is its rural settings. We've seen tons of teen films set in cities or suburbs, but few where a high school job would be collecting eggs at a chicken farm or tasting milk for defects at a dairy farm. One hardly blames Kip for not getting a job. There's also something sadly ironic about experiencing one of the most turbulent periods of one's life in a town where nothing ever happens.
But teen oddballs is hardly a new genre, and in fact, has been brilliantly covered in films like "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and the brilliant TV series "Freaks and Geeks." Films about outsiders living on the fringe of society have enjoyed wide appeal popularity in the last few years, especially with films like "American Splendor," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," "Crumb" and "Ghost World."
In many ways, "Napoleon Dynamite" capitalizes on this trend, but one important place where it diverges is that "American Splendor" and "Ghost World" celebrated its eccentrics, laughing with them rather than at them. But in "Napoleon Dynamite," the audience is invited to laugh at Napoleon's geekiness, the way he goes around labeling things as "sweet!" or people who question him as "idiots." In a way, we are meant to side with the cool kids that write him off, but are unable to ignore his loud presence as he walks in his own world down the school halls.
Without giving too much away, the film does give Napoleon his moment of glory at the end, but I was never quite sure if at the end of it, if his fellow students now going to change their attitude towards him.
Grade: A-
Let us die young or let us live forever / We don't have the power but we never say never," mourns the '80s techno group Alphaville over the bushy heads of high school slow-dancers in Napoleon Dynamite. "Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip / The music's for the sad men," continues the piped-in song, "Forever Young," before the refrain: "Forever young, I want to be forever young / Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?"
Does co-writer and director Jared Hess really want to be forever young? His film, one of the most blissfully abstract comedies in recent memory, seems unstuck in time, to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. His title hero, Napoleon Dynamite, has the name of a character that sounds equal parts blaxploitation and comic-book hero. And where are people in more dire need of heroes than in the lockered halls of high school, where danger lurks in the form of the aggressively physical (bullies) and the aggressively social (popular kids). As John Hughes reminded us time and time again in the '80s, life can be hell if you're not with the in crowd.
Of course, look at just about every Hughes film, and you smell a cop-out: the geek selling out to fit in, or to get the girl or guy, or all of the above. Hughes always seemed to tap his inner Anthony Michael Hall before realizing, deeper down, he wanted to be Andrew McCarthy.
Neither Jared Hess, nor his doppelganger, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), have such identity crises. They both know all too well what Alphaville knew, that sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip indeed. But there are classmates to protect, love triangles to negotiate, idiot relatives to endure, skills to learn, battles to win, and llamas to feed. Yup, Napoleon Dynamite can save the world -- defined here as Preston High School in Preston, Idaho -- without forgetting who he is. He's going to live forever, or die young trying.
Like much of the rest of the film, he looks like he stepped out of a time machine covering anywhere from the late '70s to the early '80s. His blond Brillo pad of a hairdo has successfully fended off any attempts at being parted, his glasses cover half his face, his tucked-in T-shirts are the pride of any silkscreen artist, his pants adhere to a strict expandable-waist theme, and his moon boots look more like slippers. He's rarely far from his Mead Organizer notebook (remember those?), in which he doodles such characters as a "liger," a combination lion and tiger. A fashion statement is a knit tie (remember those?).
As one promo for the movie notes, Napoleon is a man who's out to prove he has nothing to prove. His mannerisms are little bursts of exasperation at a misunderstanding (and slightly inferior) world. His sighs, exhaled with closed eyes, sound like tires deflating, and his arsenal of effusive language includes "gosh!" and "flip" (almost like the f-word). When life is good, it's "sweet" and "yessssssssss." His body movements come in sudden bursts of inspiration. After he lopes to the back of the school bus one morning, a curious schoolmate inquires, "What are you going to do today, Napoleon?" He shoots back, "Whatever I feel like I wanna do -- gosh!" He looks away and produces a toy action figure, ties it to a string and drags it along on the road, behind the bus.
In a sense, Napoleon is a compulsive liar; he creates girlfriends out of borrowed photographs and reputations out of thin air. He knows who he is, but sometimes has to articulate it in a way that normal human beings can understand. So he bullsh--s.
Seemingly disconnected subplots abound, including a grandmother (Sandy Martin) who disappears as soon as she enters the movie, an even dorkier older brother (Aaron Ruell) mired in an online relationship, a visiting uncle Rico (Jon Grief), who can't seem to move beyond life after 1982 and who is a continuing source of embarrassment for Napoleon. Look closer, and these are people who are often more than we think they are. Even Napoleon's new friend, transfer student Pedro (Efren Ramirez), and their mutual love interest, Deb (Tina Majorino), don't seem to have much in the way of personality -- until they come into Napoleon's orbit.
As you might have guessed about Napoleon Dynamite, there's not much of a plot -- simply, life in high school is an ongoing struggle for survival. Asking girls out and avoiding bullies can be a major energy suck and requires, as Napoleon puts it, "skills." As the Alphaville song reminds us, "It's so hard to get old without a cause / I don't want to perish like a fading horse / Youth's like diamonds in the sun / And diamonds are forever."
That Napoleon Dynamite can live forever, and maybe even get the girl along the way, is a minor miracle -- like the film itself.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Sweet hook-up: Napoleon (Jon Heder) gives his brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) a ride into town in the quirky comedy Napoleon Dynamite.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
The movie is "Napoleon Dynamite," named after its hero, a nerd so nerdy he almost outdoes the losers in "Mean Girls" and "American Splendor" for sheer geekiness.
Although several of the picture's creators hail from Brigham Young University in Utah, director Jared Hess filmed it in Preston, Idaho, where he grew up. The story is as steeped in Middle American atmosphere as "Election" and other dark comedies by Alexander Payne, but Mr. Hess gives his own special twist to debunking the utopian myth of heartland America that appears in mainstream movies. He throws in fractured families, scarce employment, and schools so boring that a student-president campaign can seem like the event of a lifetime.
Hess explores such everyday matters with a dryly humorous touch that must be seen to be appreciated. He's a true motion-picture minimalist, never using a cinematic shout when a visual whisper will do. The film's talented actors share this understated wavelength, especially Jon Heder as Napoleon and Efren Ramirez as a lonely Latino whose bid to become president of the student body seems fated to fail, since his opponent is the prettiest girl in town.
Also on hand are Napoleon's visiting uncle, one of those relatives who seem to think embarrassing you is their mission in life, and Napoleon's older brother, whose Internet girlfriend gives the story a hilarious boost when she comes to meet her wooer in person.
I thought just a few weeks ago that I never wanted to see another teen comedy, since I'd already sat through enough of them to last several lifetimes. Then the genre started spinning in directions I never expected, first in the satirical "Saved!" and now in this offbeat entry.
"Napoleon Dynamite" may not make you laugh out loud - it's too sly and subtle for that - but it will have you smiling every minute, and often grinning widely at its weirded-out charm.
Nerdiness will never seem the same.
Rating: 1/2 [0.5 out of 4 stars]
'Napoleon Dynamite" packs the explosive power of a wet firecracker left over from the bicentennial. Calling this story about a quirky high-school student from a dysfunctional family who lives in a goofy small town a one-joke movie is exaggerating by a factor of 10.
The movie started as a film student's short that was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. We can see how a five-minute version might have been entertaining. But taking a skit and padding it to feature-film length is no easy task, even for veteran entertainers (see any number of "Saturday Night Live" spinoffs). For a bunch of fresh-out-of-school first-timers, it's a classic case of biting off more then they can chew -- or we can swallow.
It's common in film school for classmates to serve as the cast and crew for each other's movies. We're willing to cut student filmmakers a little slack because they're working with volunteers, not pros. But writer-director Jared Hess decided to carry his classmate company over into his full-length project. They're not very good. Since a ticket to "Napoleon Dynamite" costs as much as one to a splashy Hollywood release, we're no longer as forgiving of their deficiencies.
The title character is played by Jon Heder, an animator by training. He's a nerdish outsider who enjoys playing tetherball by himself. He and his inert older brother, Kip (Aaron Rule, a still photographer), who has no job at age 32, live in a small town in Idaho. Napoleon spends his days being tormented by the high school jocks; Kip bides his time surfing the Internet, looking for online romances.
Their ne'er-do-well Uncle Rico (Jon Gries, "Northfork," one of the few professional actors in the cast) is experimenting with a time machine in hopes of going back to his almost-glory days on the high-school football field. He works as a door-to-door salesman, a profession he tries to coerce Kip into trying.
With the exception of Gries, everyone underplays their roles, delivering the lines deadpan. We'll have to wait for Hess' next movie before determining whether this is a stylistic choice or just an attempt to conceal the fact that most of his actors can't act. Which is not to imply that we're in any hurry to see his next movie.
Grade: D+
If you need to look down on others to feel better about yourself, "Napoleon Dynamite" is the movie for you. A success at Sundance, the feature debut of writer-director Jared Hess is a supremely condescending look at dimwits and misfits in a tiny Idaho hamlet, most notably the ultra-geeky title character, a lanky high school student, and his family and friends. It might be fun if there were any sign of affection or respect in the makers' approach to the doltish figures on display, but there isn't; an attitude of smug contempt dominates instead. Though there are some easy laughs scattered throughout, as a whole it's the sort of movie that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Napoleon is played by Jon Heder as a gawky, squinting, perpetually dyspeptic kid with a shock of frizzy orange hair, who's virtually a pariah on campus, relentlessly picked on by the guys and ignored or insulted by the girls. He lives with his grandma, a hard-bitten old broad, and his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), an even nerdier fellow with a nasal voice and no apparent interests beyond exchanging chat room messages with a distant girl. When grandma is injured in a dune buggy crash, the brothers find themselves temporarily in the dubious care of Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a hopeless dreamer obsessed with his high school football days--the high point in his life--who's trying to begin a career as a door-to-door salesman of, among other things, breast enhancement products. What little plot there is centers on Napoleon's effort to help his new friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the sole Latino in the school, get elected as class president against a popular member of the "in" crowd, and his goofy romancing of Deb (Tina Majorino), a girl almost as isolated as he is. Kip's long-distance sweetheart also turns up in the form of Lafawnduh (Shondrella Avery), a Detroit diva under whose tutelage the guy is transformed into something like Jerry Lewis' version of an inner-city thug. Nothing makes much sense in "Napoleon Dynamite," of course, because the picture is basically just a succession of ain't-these-hicks-dumb gags that, despite the deadpan tone, just keep escalating in absurdity. The sheer madness of the goings-on occasionally gets so surrealistically outrageous that you'll surely crack a smile, but the laughter will be at the expense of the characters rather than with them; they're all just convenient comic punching bags, without the slightest hint of the endearing about them. The attitude that pervades the picture is cruel and mean-spirited, in its own way as taunting as that of the bullies who make Napoleon's life miserable; viewers are basically invited to watch these dumb-as-a-post characters make fools of themselves for ninety minutes and thereby feel wonderfully superior. (The exception, of course, is Lafawnduh, who as a modern black woman might be as much a caricature as anybody else but must nonetheless be portrayed as knowing, ultra-smooth and absolutely self-confident. Pedro, on the other hand, is depicted as a near-catatonic cipher.) Within this context you have to give credit to the cast for doing what's demanded of them--particularly Heder, who certainly succeeds in appearing the ultimate geek. (One hopes that's the result of acting, not merely playing himself.) Technically the movie is ragged and gritty, in the fashion of bargain-basement independent flicks, but appearance is the least of its problems. "Napoleon Dynamite" is the sort of nasty conceit that might have worked in the original short-film form, but in this elongated feature format, it quickly deflates, becoming in the end about as exciting as a game of the title character's sport of choice--tetherball.
My favorite line in "Napoleon Dynamite" involves the titular character approaching his grandmother's pet llama with a plate of food and whining, "Tina ... eat your ham!"
There is simply no easy way to explain why this line -- and the rest of "Napoleon Dynamite" -- is so darned funny.
It just is.
Napoleon (Jon Heder) is a mouth-breathing geek living in the 1980s hell of Preston, Idaho. Or perhaps it's not the '80s -- but the clothes, cars and appliances all suggest that era, with the film's art direction dialing the movie's nerdiness volume up to 11.
A gawky underachiever with a frizzy comb-over, moon boots and oversized aviator glasses, Napoleon loves Tater Tots and expresses joy with a tight-throated "Sweet!" in his breathy adolescent twang. He's a distillation of every uber-dweeb you remember from high school, with Heder giving a performance that will strike you one of two ways -- either you'll find immense humor in his ultra-nebbishy behavior or you'll find him exceedingly irritating and undoubtedly dislike the rest of the film.
The mostly anecdotal plot revolves around several weeks during which Napoleon and his 32-year-old, chatroom-addicted brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), put up with a visit from their creepy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), while their grandmother, the victim of an off-roading accident, is in the hospital.
With a school dance coming up, Napoleon plots with his best pal, a slow-witted new kid named Pedro (Efren Ramirez) to get dates. Napoleon's suggestion that Pedro court a very popular girl by baking her a cake is inspired but doomed, while Napoleon woos his lady with a truly hideous pencil portrait. Meanwhile, Napoleon is unaware of a romantic prospect right under his nose -- a bashful geekgirl (Tina Majorino, "Waterworld") who sees something appealing in our bucktoothed hero.
"Napoleon Dynamite" was a popular entry at this year's Sundance Film Festival, but reviews have been mixed, with some critics accusing first-time director Jared Hess of having contempt for the film's characters, a la Todd Solandz ("Welcome to the Dollhouse," "Happiness"). But the film's sensibilities fall more solidly into the deadpan playground of Wes Anderson, who made the potentially unlikeable characters in his comedy "Rushmore" both funny and sympathetic. Napoleon and Pedro are social losers, certainly, but their unflappable spirit makes us cheer for them even as we laugh at their appalling dorkiness.
As Napoleon helps Pedro run for class president in what ought to be a formulaic teen-comedy plot development, writer-director Hess veers so far from the mainstream that it's impossible to predict what the outcome will be. Given how twisted every other moment in this weird little gem has been, Pedro's campaign is almost guaranteed to fail -- and even Napoleon's ultimate sacrifice, hilarious as it is to watch, seems unlikely to turn the tide.
It's a strangely charming, thoroughly original movie that, refreshingly, eschews any sort of raunchiness or profanity in the telling of the tale. The film's conclusion feels a tad rushed, but it may just be that hanging out with Napoleon is such a treat that it seems a shame it has to end.
If reproductive science made it possible for weird Al Yankovic and Ed Grimly to combine DNA, they might produce something like Napoleon Dynamite.
Napoleon (Jon Heder) is maybe 6 feet tall, but so gangly, and so awkward, so out-there with his gravity boots and his goo-goo-googly eyes, he's like something out of "Attack of the 50-foot Weenie."
He's an outcast at his local high school (in Idaho), but we don't feel sorry for him, because such empathy would derive from Napoleon's fear that there might be something wrong with him. But if Napoleon suffers the lash of the alienated, he doesn't show it.
Perhaps everything would will be fine if he could just return to his home planet. Planet Nerd. Nerdiness seems to run in the Dynamite family. Napoleon has been raised by his grandmother (no explanation is made for his absent parents, or his absurd name), and when she goes into the hospital, he and his equally nerdy brother (Aaron Ruell) are supervised by uncle Rico (Jon Gries) - a weird sort of '80s throwback who drives a conversion van and sells Tupperware and breast enhancement products.
This is a lot of kitsch, but the movie has a strange sort of affability that pulls you along. And there is something quietly heroic about the way Napoleon soldiers on through the mine field of high school nerd-dom.
He has few friends, but is always ready to make new ones. He gets a crush on a shy girl (Tina Majorino) who sells homemade jewelry, and befriends a phlegmatic Latino boy (Efren Ramirez) who transfers into school and immediately runs for class president and pursues its prettiest girl, whose name (I love this) is Summer Wheatly.
Ramirez' character typifies the movie's singular attitude towards race - he's a bit of a Speedy Gonzales caricature, but somehow stripped of meanness. Likewise for the large, shapely black woman who ends up dating Napoleon's tiny, ultra white brother.
The movie doesn't really have a plot, just a series of events, and exercises in comic mood. And Napoleon's not really a character - he's a motif. The movie does not ask that we feel anything like real sympathy for him. Another thing: The movie doesn't seem to be set in any particular time.
That is not to say the movie has no connection to reality. In an odd way, all of its phony elements add up to a very real-seeming high school - where the kids look like real teens, going to a real school.
Maybe that's why Napoleon's outcast misadventures strike viewers as familiar and universal, and why he inspires a rooting interest (the movie is already a cult phenomenon). And why, despite the movie's droll detachment, you can't help laughing when Napoleon takes the stage during the high school talent show to give the movie its out-of-the-blue climax.
Director Jared Hess, a Mormon who wrote the movie with his wife, has been influenced by other new directors - Todd Solondz and Wes Anderson, to name a couple. "Dynamite" borrows from them, reassembles ideas and forges them into something unique and funny, if not totally dynamite.
After a press screening of WHITE CHICKS, I was desperately hoping to see something good. Jetted across town quickly to get to LAFF's first of three surprise screenings, only to be shut out because they figured the eeeevil media might ruin the surprise.
Saw Douglas Dunning in the lobby. He had just seen some English film, which of course he loved because it was English.
So I went to the red room, downed two vodka cocktails, and went to see NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. I missed the first couple of minutes, but my review follows anyhow. (Tonight I'm hoping to see FAHRENHEIT 9/11; will definitely post my thoughts if it happens)
but for now...
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
Picture a Mike Judge cartoon brought very literally to life. We've got incomprehensible rednecks, deranged chicken farmers, sad-sack middle-aged salesmen, and a protagonist ("hero" would be the wrong word) who looks like a perfect hybrid of Beavis and Butt-head (also, Diedrich Bader, who appeared in OFFICE SPACE, shows up as an equally wacky macho man). You've probably seen the ubiquitous trailer by now; the film pretty much offers much, much more of the same. Yes, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is the lead character's actual name, but whether or not his parents deliberately picked out an old Elvis Costello pseudonym is never mentioned.
The film initially seems to be set in the '80s -- the lame fashions and music choices (the use of The A*Team theme is particularly awesome) point in that direction, until we get one incongruous Backstreet Boys tune towards the end. So that dates the period at least to last decade, but the whole theme of the movie is one of looking back. Napoleon's uncle Rico (John Gries, of JACKPOT and ED AND HIS DEAD MOTHER) is an Al Bundy type who once played high school football and now sells Tupperware; at one point he has Napoleon's brother Kip (newcomer Aaron Ruell, in a strong debut) purchase a ludicrous hand-made "time machine" on eBay to attempt to travel back to 1982. Meanwhile, Napoleon's life is an example of why no-one should want to go back and relive high school -- every day is "The worst day of my life, Whaddayou THINK?"
Writer-director Jared Hess, expanding on his short film "Peluca," has created a high school that rings truer than most -- NO-ONE looks like a movie high schooler; even Hilary Duff's sister Haylie, as the class hottie, is dolled down enough to look like a real person who happens to be slightly pretty.
Many will argue, however, that the film is not realistic in the slightest, but rather a gross mockery of people Different From Us. Those who say that probably did not go to high school in a rural town. Yes, Napoleon says outlandish things in an attempt to be cool (the "liger" he draws, and calls his favorite animal, is not as crazy as it seems -- lions and tigers can cross-breed, though they do not have magic powers). And yes, we laugh at his nerdiness (out of character, actor Heder is considerably better looking -- check THIS out). But there are different kinds of laughter. We all know the general difference between laughing AT someone and laughing WITH them, but there are also different degrees of laughing AT. The most normal one is, for instance, laughing when someone falls down and gets hurt. But there's another kind, the kind when someone does something really odd and unexpected, but fully commits to it with all their energy (think Chris Farley doing the Chippendale dance on SNL). We laugh at them because there's no other reaction that works. It's funny, but not because the other person is suffering. We laugh knowing that most of us don't have the balls to be so much ourselves in front of a crowd (actually, I would claim that I do have those balls, but many don't).
Napoleon may start out as a caricature, but there is a subtle and gradual change that occurs. For me, the point at which it becomes apparent is during the high school dance, when he's ditched by his date (who has been forced by her mother to accompany Napoleon as a sympathy thing), and eventually ends up dancing with the girl he really likes (Tina Majorino, WATERWORLD's little girl all grown up) to the strains of "Time After Time." The music choices push my buttons, I admit. I've been hard on some film-makers who rely too much on such things, but this isn't quite the same as, say, SHREK 2, which uses "Holding Out For a Hero" in order to tap into an emotional resonance earned by another movie (FOOTLOOSE) rather than create any of its own. I think the song is only part of the picture here; Majorino really sells the moment, with her understated acting standing in stark contrast to the over-emoting she did onscreen as a kid.
But when Hess uses "The Promise" by When in Rome over the end credits, man, that damn near brings a tear to my eye, especially in tandem with the film's final image. I didn't know the song title or the band before I saw these credits, but any fan of '80s hits will recognize it. It's the song whose chorus goes:
"I'm sorry but I'm just thinking of the right words to say
I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be
But if you wait around a while, I'll let you come with me
I promise you, I promise you...I will"
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is no REVENGE OF THE NERDS. The nerd doesn't get to score with the bully's best girl, nor does he save the world. He manages a minor triumph, and keeps on keeping on. It's a funny film, and a beautiful one. I felt that Hess' sympathies were strongly with the lead characters -- those who find the film condescending obviously didn't think so. Plotwise, the movie is a bit meandering, but so's life. I love this film, and if you're in any way similar to me in age and upbringing, I think you will too.
WE'VE SEEN NERDS on screen before. But none compare to the uber-weedy Napoleon Dynamite.
In the low-budget indie comedy that bears his name, Napoleon (Jon Heder) is a scrawny scowler from Preston, Idaho, whose eyes are lost behind the semi-opaque haze of his glasses. His red, frizzy hair looks like wire brush bristles that have been stretched and tortured into the shape of an ice cream scoop. (There's a side parting as if Napoleon occasionally makes half-hearted stabs at coiffure.) His mouth sags open as if its closing mechanism has a permanent malfunction. And his cool swagger -- complete with body-hugging jeans and T-shirt as well as soft-leather shin-high boots -- blissfully ignores his obvious nerditude.
He claims to own nunchucks. He pretends to have a girlfriend. He refuses to surrender to anyone, even the bully that regularly strangles him and bashes his head against his locker door. And his monotonal patter is given to sudden exclamations of "Goooosh!" and "Idiot!" directed at whoever's annoying him lately.
"What are you going to do today, Napoleon?" A kid asks one morning as Napoleon makes his way to the back of the school bus.
"Whatever I feel like I want to -- goooosh!" he says, peeved. He throws a little plastic figurine attached to a long thread through the window. Holding on to the string, he watches it bump and bounce on the road behind the bus all the way to school. And another Napoleon day begins.
Directed by Jared Hess (and co-written with his wife, Jerusha Hess), "Napoleon Dynamite," is definitely a one-shtick movie. And there is the nagging thought that laughing at these characters amounts to ridicule. But then there's the counter feeling that this is no different than watching a live-action version of, say, Mike Judge's TV cartoons ("Beavis and Butt-head," "King of the Hill"), or a hinterland spin on Todd Solondz's suburban geek-epic "Welcome to the Dollhouse." And I wonder if it isn't just as condescending and elitist to refrain from laughing at characters in America's cow-pasture land, as if they are beasts in a wildlife preserve that need our sanctimonious protection. I laughed. And I laughed primarily over Heder's hilarious performance. You ain't seen nothing till you've seen Napoleon attack that tether ball.
Napoleon spends most of his time weathering the weirdness of his family. His grandmother likes to drive fast on her dune buggy. Her injury resulting from this pastime forces Napoleon's incredibly bizarre Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) to watch over Napoleon and his reclusive, thirty-something brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who spends his life exploring Internet chat rooms. Rico, who loves to admire his biceps and make home videos of himself throwing a football, is Napoleon's biggest scourge.
Is there a story? Sort of. Napoleon befriends a new student named Pedro (Efren Ramirez), whose withdrawn, heavily accented demeanor makes him a social outcast. But as we learn, he is completely self-respecting and doesn't care what the unenlightened think. (There is no scorn here; quite the opposite.) In fact, Pedro decides to run for school president against the overwhelmingly popular Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff -- Hilary's sister).
Despite what seems to be a miserable existence -- the "normal" world (like all those Judge cartoons and "Dollhouse") is just too horrible to deal with -- Napoleon has a sort of indefatigable life energy. And when he decides to work for Pedro's campaign (his suggested campaign slogan: "Vote for me and all your dreams will come true"), he shows no fear of standing up against the majority. And there's some hope that he'll get it together to become romantic with sweet, shy Deb (Tina Majorino). But in this kind of a movie, who knows? That's the charm of it. You have no idea what's next.
Napoleon's final act, to save Pedro's flagging campaign, is the movie's big punch line. It doesn't amount to much in the dramaturgical scheme of things. But there's something so funny and liberating about the performance, it doesn't matter. You find yourself laughing at Napoleon's antics but you're definitely rooting for him. Ultimately, you realize, he's cooler than everyone.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 4]
Husband and wife filmmaking team Jared and Jerusha Hess think Napoleon Dynamite can join the pantheon of classic nerd heroes simply by talking funny and affecting the mien of the outcast. But nerds are people, too, something the duo never quite comes to grips with in their new indie comedy.
"Napoleon Dynamite" offers flashes of wit that could serve the team well in future outings. It's not a stretch to imagine them maturing into a wise humorist team. Consider "Napoleon" a baby step toward that end, one that's more diverting than the average teen comedy but almost utterly lacking in soul.
Set in an Anywhere school in Idaho, Napoleon (Jon Heder) looks every inch the high school pariah, from his frizzy 'do to the way he breathes out of his slack mouth whenever the bullies circle his locker. He lives with his grandmother and older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), but while his brother's fey behavior masks an aggressive id, the grandma seems a robust role model who should be able to snap Napoleon out of his funk.
Any chance of that dissipates when Grandma breaks her coccyx in a dune buggy accident, leaving the boys on their own.
Enter Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), called on to look after the boys even though both are old enough to fend for themselves. Lucky for us, since Mr. Gries' turn here provides the big laughs and elicits the most pity from us. He's a former jock who never quite became an All-American hero. Rather than move on, Uncle Rico coifs his hair like an '80s god and patterns his clothes to match, as if willing time to reverse course.
The film's half-hearted attempt at narrative finds Napoleon helping his equally obtuse pal Pedro (Efren Ramirez) run for class president against the school's uber-babe (Haylie Duff, sister of Hilary). Meanwhile, Napoleon all but ignores the advances of Deb (Tina Majorino), another local misfit who is inexplicably drawn to him.
The Coen brothers (1987's "Raising Arizona," 1998's "The Big Lebowski") are often unfairly chided for being mean-spirited toward their characters. The charge might be leveled with far more justice against the Hesses, who set up "Dynamite's" sad sacks just so they can gleefully knock them down, giving them virtually no tools from which to build a life for themselves.
Some slapstick moments seem constructed out of thin air, with no regard to context. The one glorious exception comes when Napoleon performs an impromptu dance when the class elections require some sort of talent presentation.
Watching Mr. Heder strut, gyrate and hurl his wiry frame across the stage is enough to show that the actor's got the goods to add sorely needed new dimensions to his Napoleon.
Real-life nerds have enough trouble during their high school years. Films such as "Napoleon Dynamite" shouldn't pick on them, too.
Rating: *** [3 stars out of 4]
To Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), a nerdy Idaho white boy in a red Afro, the word signifies something sublime, like learning soul dancing and how to play nunchaku. Or the time machine his crazy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) is building to revisit his days as a football hero. Or the ponytail his friend Deb (a fab Tina Majorino) wears on the side of her head. Or the bootylicious mama, Lafawnduh (Shondrella Avery), that his brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) finds on the Internet. Or just the fact that his Mexican friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) is running for class president. What's not sweet is anyone who is contemptuous of Napoleon's universe. First-time director Jared Hess, 24, who wrote the script with his wife, Jersuha, has been accused of ripping off Welcome to the Dollhouse and Rushmore. Nah. Hess and his terrific cast -- Heder is geek perfection -- make their own kind of deadpan hilarity. You'll laugh till it hurts. Sweet.
Rating: *** 1/2 [3.5 stars out of 5]
Meet Napoleon Dynamite, perhaps filmdom's ultimate high school misfit.
He has no fashion sense, wears enormous square glasses and keeps tater tots in his side pocket in case he wants to snack during class. He has a horrific quasi-afro, has no discernible skills other than drawing pictures of ligers (you know -- the offspring of a lion and a tiger), walks with a strange gait and speaks in a perpetually annoyed tone, especially when he utters his favourite epithet ("Id-iot!").
For much of his eponymous film, the slack-jawed Napoleon -- played by 26-year-old unknown Jon Heder -- is the butt of all sorts of mean-spirited jokes. And for the most part, the movie delivers big laughs -- although you may find yourself feeling a bit guilty about enjoying it so much.
There's a really nasty streak that runs through first-time director/screenwriter Jared Hess' debut, which was beloved by Sundance audiences.
You're encouraged to laugh at will at Napoleon and his friends, which include his dweebish older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), his best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez), his '80s-obsessed uncle Rico (the scene-stealing Jon Gries) and his possible love interest Deb (Tina Majorino).
The movie regards most of its characters with contempt, and savages them mercilessly. Much of the time, even the spastic Napoleon has no redeeming qualities -- until a genuinely rousing climax set during his Idaho high school's Student Body Presidential presentations.
Still, Napoleon Dynamite is very, very funny, even if the jokes are at the characters' expense. And it doesn't even really tell a story. It follows Napoleon's dreary day-to-day existence -- living with his 31-year-old brother, another social misfit who likes to chat on the Internet; feeding his grandma's pet llama; getting bullied at school; going to the big dance; helping Pedro win the Student Body presidency against popular blond Summer (Haylie Duff, Hilary's older sister) -- at its own leisurely pace. Virtually every shot is designed to make the characters look ridiculous or grotesque in some way, and there are times when Napoleon Dynamite reaches almost surreal heights in its mockery.
All of the performances are terrific, especially Heder, and Gries, who plays the shifty ex-jock uncle who wishes he could travel back in time to 1982 when he was a real somebody instead of being the guy who lives out of his van and videotapes himself firing footballs in the air. Each cast member captures his small-town rubes and oddballs to a tee.
See Napoleon Dynamite and laugh at it -- and we guarantee you'll laugh a lot. Just don't expect to feel too proud about it afterward.
I'm trying to remember when I laughed as much in a movie as I did while watching Napoleon Dynamite -- probably not since the last time I saw Waiting for Guffman. Both comedies feature characters I immediately cared about in spite of their faults and silly behavior. In Napoleon Dynamite, the people are more realistic than in Guffman, but they're just as hilarious.
First, there's Napoleon himself -- a tall, geeky high school student who lives with his grandma and older brother. As played by Jon Heder, this put-upon teenager made me smile every time he appeared on screen. Looking at his mop of bushy hair, I couldn't help thinking about "Sideshow Bob" from TV's The Simpsons, but his unique stare and monotone delivery drew me into the poignant world of nerd existence.
Next, meet Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a new student Napoleon befriends after everyone else shuns him. When Pedro decides to run for Student Body President, Napoleon agrees to help with the campaign. Even though Pedro gets in trouble by introducing a piñata in the form of his "mean popular girl" rival candidate (Haylie Duff), Napoleon saves the day during an election assembly. I can't say how, of course, because that would spoil the surprise. Just know it involves Napoleon doing something you least expect and doing it amazingly well.
Then there's Deb (Tina Majorino), a shy, budding entrepreneur who makes colorful key chains and shoots glamour shots when she's not trying to get Napoleon to pay attention to her. Finally, there's Napoleon's wacky family -- Kip, a thirtysomething brother (Aaron Ruell) with nothing better to do than spend time in chat rooms on the Internet; a grandmother (Sandy Martin) who winds up in the hospital as the result of a dune buggy accident; and Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a selfish loser who almost ruins his nephews' lives when he moves in to take care of them.
Oops! I almost forgot LaFawnduh (Shrondella Avery), Kip's Internet girlfriend. Talk about a live wire! When she comes on camera, the sparks really fly. LaFawnduh becomes the catalyst that changes everything for Napoleon and his brother.
Thanks to Jared Hess (director and co-writer with Jerusha Hess, his wife), Napoleon Dynamite reminds us not to judge a book by its cover. And the same goes for this movie. Don't judge it by its simple production values, such as opening credits written on plates of food. Evaluate it by what's inside: the tale of an amusing and lovable main character with the courage to meet the challenges of high school despite his social ineptitude.
(Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures and rated "PG" for thematic elements and language.)
This review is dedicated to Hollie Thornton, Napoleon's number one fan.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 stars out of 5]
Napoleon Dynamite is a movie trying desperately to be quirky and succeeding. It's weird, odd, and everything the trailers might lead you to expect, but seems to have no loftier goal than being freakish. The movie lacks any real heart or emotion and thus fails to connect on any sort of deeper level.
The titular Mr. Dynamite (Jon Heder) is a High School nerd, only not the type that will ever go on to something greater. He's a nerd without any brains, making him more of a pathetic loser than bona fide super-geek. Everything about him is pathetic, from his curly brown hair to his obsession with ligers, to his tendency to wear his pants at Steve Urkel levels. He has no friends, though he doesn't seem to be lonely. Still, after a particularly difficult day of beatings, he meets a new student named Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and the two quickly become friends, sort of. They don't really have much of a relationship, but they stand next to each other in various social situations. Pedro, being more Mexican than nerd, gives Napoleon bland advice on women and bike jumping, while Napoleon helps soft spoken Pedro deliver a romantic cake to the woman of his dreams.
Napoleon seems fairly unaffected by his surrounding. Things like rejections and bullying leave him unmarred as he crawls into a mental fantasy world of unicorns and nun chucks. He's uninvolved and so we the audience feel pretty uninvolved. There's little all that redeeming about Napoleon, he'd be hard to root for in any situation, assuming he had any goals, which he doesn't. At some point Pedro runs for class president, and Napoleon seems somewhat interested in helping him. But his interest seems only passing, another extension of a nerd-boy fantasy world that we just aren't allowed to be part of.
There are a lot of reasons to find movies funny, but I'm never comfortable when asked to chuckle simply because I feel superior to someone. Napoleon Dynamite gropes about for humor by watching Napoleon and his equally pathetic family do things which label them as inferior. It asks you to respond with the kind of reprehensible joy that a bully might receive from giving his victim a swirly. It appeals to people who live their lives attempting to be "cool" and thus gives them an obviously lesser human being to deride. Wrapping all that in a quirky, independent film package only makes liking the movie itself seem that much cooler.
Dynamite flails around at obvious gags involving the mispronunciation of Spanish words, and cliche scenes of nerd dancing. This approach is neither original nor exciting, but is occasionally mildly amusing. Napoleon isn't trying to achieve anything, isn't going anywhere, and doesn't seem to be interested in anything, so why should we be interested in him? His journey is one of stolid stupidity and steady unacceptability. Director Jared Hess pushes Napoleon's stupidity as far as it can go in pursuit of cheap laughs, but achieves nothing that isn't easily forgettable.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Unfortunately this one is only rental worthy which is a major disappoinment to me. I saw the short that this one is based on (Peluca) and cheered loudly when it won best student short film at the 2003 Deep Ellum Film Festival. Peluca is hilarious in an obtuse way that Napoleon Dynamite only sniffs a few times. When it comes out on DVD I'm sure that Peluca will be included and you can see what I mean. Dynamite is a short film stretched beyond its limits and littered with afterthoughts. His older brother, for instance, is only funny in places and halfway through becomes a walking cliche...that's just how he's written. Napoleon himself (played expertly by Jon Heder and named Seth in Peluca) was actually more well developed (or perhaps more likeable) in Peluca. His way of speaking and the things he was interested in were both focused yet amusingly random. They shoehorn every joke from the short into the feature, but the context is often changed and the impact of the comedy lessened. Now if you haven't seen Peluca (which most of you probably haven't), you obviously won't see all these differences, so perhaps Dynamite will seem really fresh to you. Despite its shortcomings, it does take the road less traveled at times which made me laugh, but never as violently as I did while watching Peluca...it's one of the funniest/quirkiest short films I've ever seen. If you enjoyed Rushmore, think of Max Fisher minus the intellect, social skills, charisma, and reason for being...you now have Napoleon. He's funny in spurts, but mostly he's stupid and at times mean. Pedro is pretty funny but they ruin his hilarious scene from Peluca as well...I just hate this. It was great to see Jon Gries (Lazlow from Real Genius) as Napoleon's Uncle Rico. His character is perhaps the best one that was added for the lengthened script. His living in his own re-written high school past allows for some funny moments. Anyhow, check it out in the theater if you think you'd like to see an "anti-teen comedy" comedy. It's not horrible, but it could've been SO much better. Check it out on DVD for sure if only to catch the pure greatness of Peluca...Seth rules...sweet.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
Forget the Greek heroes of "Troy." Meet the geek hero of Preston High. "Napoleon Dynamite" may be the summer sleeper that the hip and the restless have been waiting for - even if in the final analysis it lacks any real bite or substance.
A Todd Solondz ("Happiness") movie without the perversion,"Napoleon Dynamite" features the most inventively low-tech opening credits of the year and a must-see and soon-to-be widely imitated performance by a grotesquely gangly, unknown animation student named Jon Heder in the title role.
As Napoleon himself would say, "Sweet." Napoleon has a red Afro, oversized eyeglasses and a body only Gumby could appreciate. He likes Tater Tots and speaks in a dull monotone when he isn't heaving in exasperation. When he's not practicing with his nunchucks or sketching unicorns or "ligers" - a tiger crossed with a lion - or being tormented by high school bullies, Napoleon is probably outside feeding slop to the family's pet llama. Or he may be bickering with his jobless and hopeless older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), a 32-year-old runt who spends his days "chatting online with babes."
Preston High, where Napoleon goes to school, is the comedy film Columbine. Napoleon and his new buddy, the short, semi-conscious Mexican-American Pedro (EfrenRamirez) are the school's real-life Beavis and Butt-head, a couple of outcasts who nevertheless optimistically plot to land dates for the prom.
Napoleon and Kip live with their granny (Sandy Martin). But when she breaks her coccyx on a motocross bike, sleazy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), who lives in a Dodge van, moves in with them. After making a move on Kip, Uncle Rico is peddling herbal breast enhancement schemes door-to-door and buying a time machine online so he can relive the glory days of 1982. Napoleon also befriends Deb (former child actor Tina Majorino in a sweet debut as an adolescent), a young woman and photographer trying somewhat pathetically to improve herself.
A noteworthy achievement in freaks-and-geeks cinema and often reminscent of the work of RhodeIsland's famed Farrelly brothers ("Dumb and Dumber," "Kingpin"), "Napoleon Dynamite" was written and directed by 24-year-old Jared Hess, an Idahoan dropout of Brigham Young University.
Framed as a simple coming-of-age-movie, it's a "Portrait of the Geek as a Young Man," an American trailer park "Candide" in which all the VCRs are top-loaders and a pure heart trumps any deficiencies of physical beauty, IQ, education, money or breeding. It is one of those rare films that makes you laugh when you aren't appalled at what you're watching.
But this winning example of "geek pride" is also myopic beyond belief, and the triumphant "Flashdance" ending, featuring Hilary's sister Haylie Duff as Napoleon's rival in the school election, doesn't make the grade. Anywhere else in the world, a film like "Napoleon Dynamite" would have some political point of view to express. Here in the USA, it has nothing to say on the subject one way or the other.
You'd think that some of the young people of the American heartland depicted in this "reality-based" film would have older brothers and sisters in the armed services and something, however stupid or funny, to say about the state of the world.
But no. On this level, "Napoleon Dynamite" is a film for a generation that has agreed to keep its mouth shut and consume.
Rating: *** 1/2 [3.5 out of 4 stars]
Grab a Ronald McDonald wig, a brown vest suit that would have been out of style in 1974 and a pair of spectacle rims even Steve Urkel wouldn't touch.
Add a toothy, self-important sneer, and there's your cheap, easy cinephile Halloween costume. You'll walk into a party and someone across the room will yell, "Hey, you're Napoleon Dynamite!" And you're all set.
The costume idea is just one of the gifts delivered by the independent Sundance Film Festival hit "Napoleon Dynamite." With your admission price, you also get 82 minutes of delectably oddball comedy and reams of dialogue worthy of saving in your mental hard drive devoted to movie one-liners.
"Napoleon Dynamite" turns the High School Loser Makes Good formula on its side, then tickles it mercilessly for laughs. Set in rural Idaho, the characters' idea of entertainment is ramping bicycles off particleboard jumps and plunging into various get-rich-quick schemes.
The film was shot on a $400,000 budget - microscopic by Hollywood standards - and looking at the Spartan sets, props and production values, you actually wonder how the filmmakers managed to squander all that dough. The lack of gloss is charming and befitting the backcountry ways the film is mocking. Brigham Young University classmates Jared Hess and Jon Heder make what is essentially a student film, and they get the audience laughing harder than anything Will Ferrell and his studio machine can muster.
Heder plays Napoleon, nerd of nerds and reservoir of comic entertainment. Burdened with social ineptitude and bizarre looks, Napoleon struggles through a high school life plagued with roughhousing bullies and uninterested females. As alienated as Holden Caulfield, only without his smarts, Napoleon carries hefty contempt for everything and everyone around him.
Take the scene, much funnier to watch than to read, in which Napoleon opens the door to see a friendship-bracelet salesgirl, whom he dismisses coolly, as though she were taking up his valuable time. "I made like a 'finity of those at Scout camp," Napoleon says with a sneer.
Napoleon's lines, coupled with a droll, deadpan delivery, make the material sing.
Consider, also, the instance in which Napoleon confronts someone on her milk-drinking habits:
"I see you're drinking 1 percent milk. Is that because you think you're fat? Because you're not. You could probably be drinking whole milk."
It's not that the screenplay, co-written by director Hess and his wife, Jerusha, crackles with a particular comic wit, nor is it Heder's comic charisma alone that carries the day. It's more the fusion of forces by friends on the same askew wavelength who combine their skills into something greater than their sum.
The film has little story to speak of. It's all about character and environment, and it has richly developed layer upon layer of the stuff. Napoleon, intent on finding someone to take to the school dance, is the center of our attention, but the corners of the screen crackle with weirdo folks nearly as savory.
Giggle with Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the new kid who insists on dating the prettiest girls and running for class president. Smirk at Kip (Aaron Ruell), Napoleon's pencil-necked older brother, who obsesses over martial arts and his online affair. Gawk at Summer (Haylie Duff, Hilary's sister), the mean-spirited popular girl whom everyone secretly hates.
While we're laughing at everyone, we're noticing little parts of ourselves inside the ridiculous characters. And we're cheering for them.
Like its hero, the film zooms along in its own out-there orbit, sure to connect with comedy lovers looking to try something bizarre. "Napoleon Dynamite" matches those expectations explosively, with its own goofy brand of TNT.
Grade: B-
Rick James once scored a hit with "Super Freak." Now Napoleon Dynamite hopes to do the same with its super geek, a tall, gangly Idaho teen so uncool that he's almost cool.
Napoleon Dynamite breathes through his mouth, draws unicorns wherever he can and has a flair for compulsive and creative lying (like the summer he spent hunting wolverines with his uncle in Alaska). He sports a shock of orange hair and plays tether ball, with much gusto, by himself. Even if you don't like the film and its freak-show depiction of small-town life, it's hard not to admire the commitment of Jon Heder's performance.
Directed by Idaho native Jared Hess, written by Mr. Hess and his wife Jerusha, Napoleon Dynamite operates under a flag of deadpan weirdness that waves through every moment. Napoleon lives with his 32-year-old, equally geeky brother (Aaron Ruell) who spends his time surfing the Net in search of love. His clueless uncle Rico (Jon Gries) hunts for a time machine so he can return to the high school football championship game he almost won. Napoleon's best friend, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), is a near-somnambulant Mexican kid who woos the hot chick in school (Haylie Duff, Hilary's sister) and mounts an improbable run for class president.
The action, such as it is, unfolds before a collection of tacky wallpaper and public settings that emphasize the classic jocks vs. nerds dynamic. The score, much of it performed on Casio-esque synthesizers and drum machines, strives to enhance the geek-chic feel. Napoleon Dynamite is more about atmosphere than story, which will make some thankful for the scant 82-minute running time.
Filmmakers have every right to poke fun at where they grew up. If they don't, then who does? The performances are one-note, but the notes are colorful enough to get laughs. Still, you never shake the feeling that you're laughing at, not with, this benign, fashion-challenged motley crew. The film never tries to peel away the inner life of high school social outcasts, a la Freaks and Geeks. If Diane Arbus sought the humanity of her oddball photo subjects, Napoleon Dynamite seeks little save a series of walking punch lines, some of which are admittedly funny.
But when all is said and done, there would be no film without Mr. Heder. He does nothing less than create a new type here, the swaggering nerd who sticks out his chest and wields his obliviousness like a weapon. Napoleon is a vivid and unique comic creation at the heart of a film that doesn't wander very far.
Fox Searchlight purchased Napoleon at Sundance, where other indie comedies, including Happy, Texas and Super Troopers, have been snapped up only to die at the box office (that Utah altitude has a way of warping financial judgment). But Fox is putting some marketing muscle behind Napoleon, with fan clubs, ample word-of-mouth screenings and other promotional tools, plus distribution and marketing help from Paramount and the hipsters at MTV Films. Their task won't be easy, but in Mr. Heder, they at least have their poster boy.
Grade: C
One of the big buzz movies out of Sundance earlier this year, Napoleon Dynamite signals the arrival of some undeniably gifted new faces on the independent film scene. Unfortunately, the project in which these newcomers have chosen to showcase their talents is unworthy of the creative energy they've expended on it.
A relentlessly quirky high school movie, Dynamite is a sort of remedial Rushmore set in the Idaho hinterlands. Jon Heder stars as the title character, an awkward teen-ager living with his grandmother and older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). Napoleon is something of an outcast at school, largely because his day-to-day demeanor suggests someone who was frequently dropped on his head as an infant.
Napoleon does manage to befriend Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a recent arrival from Mexico. The soft-spoken Pedro plans to run for class president to enhance his image with the chicks, and Napoleon is quick to sign on to his campaign. Meanwhile, things are changing at home; with grandma in the hospital, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves into the house. Rico is a Marlboro Man manque permanently trapped in his high school football glory days, circa 1982.
Does director and co-writer Jared Hess love these misfit characters or has he created them simply to heap scorn upon? It's a question that comes up in discussions about filmmakers ranging from the Coen brothers to Todd Solondz, and it's an issue here, as Hess repeatedly sets his characters up for mockery only to embrace them at the last minute.
Heder gives a fearlessly dorky performance as Napoleon, but he and the rest of the cast are straitjacketed by the cartoonish conception of the characters. Stylistically, the movie is a thrift shop of the tackiest and kitschiest stuff America has had to offer for the past 30 years. It's chock-full of bad haircuts, ugly clothes, orange vans, wood-paneled basements and all the worst music you'd hoped to never hear again. It's a landmark achievement in curdled nostalgia, but the whole enterprise leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Hess is a promising filmmaker, but for now, at least, an even more promising cynic.