Rating: * [1 out of 4]
It was a Sundance Film Festival darling earlier this year, but I was left wondering why.
Jon Heder stars as Napoleon Dynamite - a small town kid in Idaho who doesn't fit in at school and barely fits in within his own family. While he suffers the slings and arrows of being the uncool, obnoxious kid at school, his 30-year old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) spends his days looking for love on the Internet and his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) tries to relive his former high school glory days. Napoleon's world gets a little more complicated when his Grandmother has an accident, and Uncle Rico has to take care of him.
Will Napoleon find a way to cope? Can he find love with a new girl and friendship with a new pal?
I have to admit, I'm stretching it a bit with that plot summary. Sadly, Napoleon Dynamite doesn't have much of a plot. Worst of all, it seems to be a mean spirited look at people who aren't like you and me. Napoleon and his pals aren't the heroes of a Bruce Springsteen song who get up every morning and go to work each day. They're knuckleheads. Writer/director Jared Hess doesn't make any effort to show nobility in the life these characters lead or make us sympathize with them. He appears only to want to make fun of these people, and that's mean. I feel like Hess wants to tell the audience, "you're better than these people, so laugh at them." I can't go for that. They aren't obviously comedic like characters in Dumb and Dumber or some movie like that. These characters are sad, lonely, and down on their luck. I can't laugh at that.
Heder does a great job making Napoleon Dynamite into the most obnoxious movie characters of the year, but is he a hero? I find it hard to believe he has learned anything or made his life better, but maybe that's the point, and that's what I find so mean. The supporting cast is strong, especially Ruell, but, without much of a plot, their performances don't serve much of a purpose.
There are dorks. There are dweebs, geeks, spazzoids and nerds. But they all bow down before Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder) and kiss his "Sailor Moon" ring.
"Napoleon Dynamite" is an odd little movie about an eccentric teen who's seemingly oblivous to his trademark nerd attributes. He's got coke-bottle glasses, a red 'fro, he walks around in plastic moon boots, and when he opens his mouth, a flat monotone rings out words like "sweet" and "unicorn." All the while, Napoleon fancies himself some sort of enchanted ninja. He claims to keep nunchucks in his locker (when there's room) and practices his karate chops on a playground ball.
But the movie isn't just about Napoleon. "Napoleon Dynamite" is about the lives of several lonely loons living in a small desert town in Idaho. Rarely does a movie set out to construct characters with such bizarre idiosynchrocies that watching it might even send Christopher Walken on a Prozac binge.
First, there's Napoleon's 31-year-old brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), who's a knockoff of the Chris Elliot character from "Get a Life." The puny wannabe Casanova has a bad mustache, hiked up dress socks, and an Internet girlfriend. Then there's Uncle Rico (John Gries), who comes to live with the "kids" after their grandma injures herself in some extreme dunebuggy accident. Rico is stuck in 1982 and constantly reliving the state championship football game his team lost. He even tries to buy a time machine online -- a haphazardly constructed contraption that requests its users to strap a cattle prod to their genitals. Darwin Awards where are you? Finally there's Pedro (Efren Ramirez). He's the new kid at school having just moved from Mexico -- and by default Napoleon's best and only friend. He's quiet, but he's automatically cool since he's the only kid in high school with a mustache. There's always one.
"Napoleon Dynamite" doesn't have plot in a beginning-middle-end sense, but it does follow the characters as they try to make sense of their world and solve their identity crises. For Napoleon, this means honing new skills, because according to him, "chicks dig skills." He already knows how to draw magical beasts on the back of his homework during class. His favorite is the liger, a cross between a tiger and lion -- now if he can only master dancing. For Kip, finding himself means meeting his Internet girlfriend face to face and popping a jungle fever pill. Rico sets out selling Tupperware and breast enhancement pills door-to-door to finally somewhat legitimize himself. Pedro wants a chick, and to be class president. It's all about the 'stache, baby.
The best part of Napoleon is that you can laugh without feeling sorry for Napoleon. He's not a tragic character. He doesn't want your pity. And since there's no chance of anyone like Napoleon ever existing, there's really no guilt to sweat for wanting to join in on the swirlies and wedgies. If you take "Napoleon" seriously, you'll dismiss it as indie crap and walk out during the first five minutes. If you walk in with an open mind and an acute appreciation for forging truly unique characters and interactions, you'll come back five times. It has the potential to grow from a small film with a niche audience into a big pop culture phenomenon, kinda like "Clerks." Or it could be "Gigli" with acne and braces.
Rating: **** 1/2 [4.5 out of 5 stars]
Following firmly in the footsteps of modern cinema geekdom right behind Max Fischer ("Rushmore"), Dawn Wiener ("Welcome to the Dollhouse") and the eye-rolling Enid ("Ghost World") is Napoleon Dynamite. Be forewarned though: Napoleon's an ornery little nerd who'd just as soon bite your head off with a sarcastic smirk than deign to talk to you.
There's a slyly shocking realism to the details of Napoleon Dynamite, as if it could have been made only by someone who once wore moon boots and a huge unkempt red afro to school. One suspects that first-time writer/director Jared Hess was, once upon a time, an oddball of this caliber, one who eventually rose above his social ineptitude and venomous disdain for other people to become the creator of... a vicious little nerdly troll who's socially inept and has a venomous disdain for other people.
Well, most people anyway.
Napoleon hates his big brother Kip, who is an officious little pervert who trolls the internet chat rooms in search of a woman.
Napoleon also hates his obtuse Uncle Rico, the brothers' unwelcome caretaker after Grandma injures her hip in a nasty dune buggy accident.
Napoleon really hates Tina, because he always has to feed her. Tina is his grandmother's pet llama.
One person Napoleon doesn't seem to hate is Pedro. Newly arrived in the backwater burg of Preston, Idaho, Pedro is of Mexican descent and speaks rather poor English. Pedro and Napoleon become friends over shared tater tots.
So if Napoleon Dynamite is a fairly unlikeable geek who hates everyone except for the new Mexican kid at school, what makes us think he's worthy of a whole movie?
Well, if all you know of Movie Geekdom is that "Jon Cryer as Ducky was, like, hilarious!" then perhaps Napoleon Dynamite is not for you. If, however, you're on the lookout for a smart, subversive, endlessly sarcastic and oddly poignant little curiosity - be sure to get in line once Napoleon Dynamite hits town, because it's a guaranteed Cult Favorite waiting to happen.
A movie becomes a Cult Favorite partially by being a little...untraditional, but mainly these movies strike a chord because there's some subtle craftsmanship and quiet artistry that elevate the films beyond typical multiplex fare. There's a depth of character and droll humor in Napoleon Dynamite that recalls a dash of the Coens and a pinch of Wes Anderson. Despite offering a few different flavors of indie-cinema inspirations, Hess confidently creates something that's still fresh and unique.
Jon Heder, in the title role, dives face-first into the character of Napoleon. So memorably odd is his performance that one suspects he may have trouble finding roles in the future. He simply IS Napoleon Dynamite, so much so that it's almost like watching a documentary. Jon Gries (The Rundown) offers a fantastically funny turn as the stuck-in-the-80s Uncle Rico, while Aaron Ruell is suitably creepy (in an oddly humorous way) as Napoleon's ubergeek brother. Efren Ramirez (Rave), as the mild-mannered Pedro, is quite strong throughout; he and Heder share several excellent moments.
Toss in a great supporting turn by Tina Majorino (Waterworld), a soundtrack populated by some of the most obnoxious 80s tunes ever recorded, and a bleakly hilarious approach to the oft-told tale of Geeks Gone Wild... like I said, you're looking at a cult classic just waiting to happen.
"Napoleon Dynamite" is a shining exmple of what Independent Movies are all about. There's no WAY something this odd and acerbic and just plain different would ever get produced via the Hollywood Machine. So Hess banged the thing together on his own, made it sing, and then sold it to the distributor willing to release the thing on 1,000 screens. Now all you have to do is go buy a ticket.
Rating: ** 1/2 [2.5 out of 4 stars]
The latest Sundance success likely to fall flat in the real world, Jared Hess' deadpan debut could have been so much better if only he'd had the courage to actually appreciate his loser characters.
Hess, who has obviously spent too much time locked indoors with the collected works of Todd Solondz, makes a sacrificial offering out of his titular misfit (Jon Heder), a slack-jawed geek who slouches miserably through the halls of his Idaho high school.
Heder ably captures the quirks that make Napoleon a hopeless outcast. Hess handles the visuals with impressive confidence for a first-timer.
But with the exception of one truly glorious dance solo, the movie treats its hero - and his equally uncool family - with undisguised disdain.
And if his creators can't even find a reason to like this kid, why on earth would we?
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
"Napoleon Dynamite" is something of a poor nerd's "Rushmore," a celebration of freaks and geeks told with formalist precision from a filmmaker who can clearly relate to the plight of adolescent outsiders.
Jared Hess' debut movie, an audience favorite at Sundance (but don't hold that against it), casts an unsparing eye on its title character, a sleepy-eyed, frizzy-haired Idaho teenager as likely to eventually find a home in a fringe militia group as he is to achieving any kind of happiness in mainstream America.
But then, there's nothing mainstream about tiny, rural Preston, Idaho, where Napoleon (Jon Heder) goes to school when he's not feeding casseroles to his pet llama or judging cows with the Future Farmers of America. Director Hess, who co-wrote the film with his wife, Jerusha, grew up in Preston himself, and clearly knows his way around town, capturing the landscapes and the psychology of the place with a mixture of fear and laughing.
"Dynamite" is essentially a series of comic vignettes charting the slow growth of young Napoleon as he learns to let go of his justifiably hostile and anguished view of life. Face it: Solo tetherball and performing sign language sing-alongs with the Happy Hands Club are not exactly food for the soul if you're 16 years old.
Napoleon's home life isn't much better. He lives with his grandmother (Nancy Martin), who breaks her coccyx early in the action so Hess can introduce family doofus Uncle Rico (Jon Gries). Rico wants to go back to 1982, believing that if his high school football coach had put him in in the fourth quarter, "things would be different."
Rico's convictions on the subject run deep: He even buys a mail-order time machine contraption with Napoleon's lisping, 32-year-old, still-living-at-home brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). It's curious why he goes to all the trouble since Preston itself seems stuck in an '80s time warp. (Listen to the music at the school dance.)
Clearly, Napoleon needs to look elsewhere to find contentment. He eventually meets Mexican immigrant Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who stages a great underdog campaign for class president, and Deb (Tina Majorino), a classmate earning extra money shooting glamour photos (a growth industry in Preston) and making boondoggle key chains. (Napoleon's opening line to her - "Is that 1 percent milk you're drinking?" - should, by all rights, become a perennial ice-breaker in school cafeterias after this movie.)
There's a measure of redemption and a glimmer of cautious optimism by the film's end, but again, Hess knows enough about life in these parts not to sugar-coat anything. That commitment to honesty, along with enough genuine laughs, gives "Napoleon Dynamite" an appealing humanity that will leave you smiling.
Rating: ** [2 out of 4 stars]
"Napoleon Dynamite" may have been the surprise comedy hit of the last Sundance Film festival--and its 24-year-old co-writer-director Jared Hess may be a helmer with a future--but that doesn't mean it will make you laugh out loud. It didn't tickle me much, anyway, though it did hand me a few smiles and it may work for others.
Hess, his co-writer wife Jerusha Hess and some buddies from Brigham Young University have imagined a screw-loose parody of the small Idaho city where Hess grew up. They populated it with the usual collection of snobs, nerds and eccentrics you find in most high school comedies (whether big-studio or indie), found a camera-friendly newcomer, Jon Heder, to play the lead role of local weirdo Napoleon Dynamite and came up with the sort of amiably bent, wistful indie that plays well at festivals and jogs a few memories of how silly or painful high school was.
It's fairly entertaining--but not the second coming of indie comedy some notices might lead you to expect. The best things about "Napoleon," in fact, are the gangly moonchild presence of Heder, and the overall mood of retro '80s style, languor and absurdity that Hess gets.
Heder's Napoleon is a misfit of unusual obnoxiousness: a tetherball addict whose favorite expressions (repeated endlessly) are "Sweet" and "Idiot!" Napoleon lives with his computer-geeky younger brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) and, temporarily, with their macho-creepo Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), while attending Preston (Idaho) High--which happens to be Hess' alma mater.
At Preston, he bonds with fellow misfits Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and Deb (Tina Majorino), while assaulting the values of popular personality kid Summer and her vacuous but well-dressed jock-cheerleader retinue, all of whom he and Pedro challenge in a school election. Meanwhile, Uncle Rico zips around town trying be a supersalesman, as Napoleon's grandma recovers from a cycle accident.
The movie has an offbeat film-indie mood, but the climax of all this is exactly the sort of flabbergasting worm-turning resolution you'd get in "Revenge of the Nerds" or any other "Geeks rule" Hollywood comedy of the '80s--a few of which are much better than "Napoleon."
I was rooting for "Napoleon Dynamite" because, like Hess, I come from a small town--Williams Bay, Wis.--that is even tinier than Preston (funnier, too). But this is the sort of Sundance audience hit that doesn't necessarily travel. For me, the humor was too derivative, the resolution too upbeat.
To give Hess credit, he and his company have made an entertaining movie on a small budget, with a good mix of new talent and veterans, like Gries ("Jackpot," "Northfork") and Majorino ("When a Man Loves a Woman"). Even if it's no "Bottle Rocket" or "Twin Falls, Idaho," the movie has style, smarts and vision--that overall off-trail whimsy that's always called "quirkiness." It leaves you confident about the movies Hess will eventually make, if not totally pleased with this one.
Grade: B-
The nerds certainly had their revenge at Sundance this year, when this geeky comedy became, like, totally popular. Set in a tiny Idaho town, this flick tells the nonadventures of the titular teenager (Jon Heder), a slack-jawed dweeb with Coke-bottle glasses and tight red 'fro. He's surrounded by quirky rubes--his salesman uncle, his Internet-obsessed bro and his only friend, Efren Ramirez, who runs for class president against school darling Haylie Duff. Director-cowriter Jared Hess borrows heavily from the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson to whip up some offbeat characters--too bad he doesn't emulate their storytelling skills, as well. A physically adept comedian, Heder and the rest of the spot-on cast provide a smattering of chuckles, but they get hung by the one-note script that feels like an amusing sketch stretched too long. Dynamite only pops when you want it to explode.
Veteran character actor Jon Gries adds another indelible role to his resume with his portrayal of a door-to-door breast enhancements salesman in Napoleon Dynamite.
Actor Jon Gries vividly remembers his reaction when he started reading the screenplay of what would become the off-kilter comedy Napoleon Dynamite. "Sixteen pages into the script, I was laughing out loud," he says. "I didn't need to read another page."
"I called my manager and I said, 'Yeah, I'll do this. I'll do this for nothing. I don't care. I love it.'"
Gries wasn't the only one to embrace the titular teen geek, as the film became the sleeper hit of this year's Sundance Film Festival, winning the festival lottery when distributor Fox Searchlight (since joined by Paramount and MTV Films) snapped it up. The movie went on to win the Film Discovery Jury Award at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival and is now arriving in theaters as a welcome alternative to the usual summer blockbuster fare.
The ghost of Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse hovers over Napoleon Dynamite, the story of an awkward Preston, Idaho teenager (Jon Heder) who finds himself the object of derision at both his high school and the home he shares with his ATV-riding Grandma (Sandy Martin), 30-year-old chatroom-obsessed brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) and pet llama Tina. But 24-year-old first-time director Jared Hess, who wrote the script with his wife Jerusha, is blessed with a far sunnier worldview than Solondz.
The film is an enormously affectionate paean to small-town misfits and the perpetually put-upon Napoleon, whose drawn-out sighs punctuate the movie and who gradually emerges as a genuine hero. Says Gries, who plays Rico, the uncle who delights in torturing his nephew, of Napoleon's transformation, "What I love about this piece is that it's about how a person can be perceived physically and how they can almost adopt the perceptions that have been put on them from outside sources. And transcending that comes from your own self-initiation."
"The endearing quality about Napoleon is that he kind of lies, he boasts and brags and tries to compensate, and yet all that is thrown aside."
Gries had his own challenges to wrestle with in Rico, the door-to-door salesman of breast enhancement products, who lives in a van where he endlessly videotapes himself throwing a football in a vain attempt to recapture his lost youth. "I think he's a reflection of potential never realized," remarks Gries, adding that when it came to nailing down Rico, "the wig was a big thing."
Advised by Hess that he should envision Rico as someone who thinks of himself as David Hasselhoff or Burt Reynolds, Gries immediately saw a way into the character, telling Hess, "We've got to get him a bad hairpiece. Here's a guy who so desperately wants to go back to a certain time in his life and the only way that he can [do that] is to have this perfectly coiffed, big brown hair that he clearly doesn't have anymore underneath it."
"I feel like I was so lucky to stumble onto to this film," adds Gries, who very nearly missed the opportunity. After a five-year run as the bashful computer expert Broots on the TV series The Pretender and a starring role as hard-luck karaoke country singer Sunny Holiday in Mark and Michael Polish's Jackpot, Gries decided to quit acting in order to concentrate on directing and writing.
But after he took one last role in the noirish indie comedy The Big Empty to raise a little cash, casting director Jory Weitz, who worked on both films, screened The Big Empty dailies for Hess, pointing out Gries to the newbie director.
"I feel like one of these old-time baseball players who's just waiting to say, 'Look, I'm going to hang 'em up,'" says Gries, grateful for the surprise role that Napoleon Dynamite provided. "It feels somewhat like a fairy tale, because here was this low-budget movie that just... They didn't have the money to make this movie. Pure gut that I wanted to do this film, pure gut. I just felt something."
For the 46-year-old Gries, Napoleon Dynamite represents the latest turn in an idiosyncratic career. The son of the late Tom Gries, a busy director of both movies and TV shows who is probably best known for his work on Breakheart Pass, the original Helter Skelter miniseries and the Muhammad Ali biopic The Greatest, his introduction to acting began by accident.
Out playing on the Paramount lot one day, while his father worked inside on pre-production for his latest film, the Charlton Heston-starring western Will Penny, the 10-year-old came to the attention of the movie's producers, who promptly cast him over his father's vociferous objections. Gries recalls the indelible memory of acting opposite Heston on location in Bishop, California.
"There was a scene where I had to hug him and I'll never forget it, I was bawling," he remembers. "I didn't want to show it, because it wasn't part of the scene and I was embarrassed. I didn't want anybody to know I was crying."
"It was a strange thing, these feelings built for this guy," Gries continues. "There was this fatherly figure here who was really acting fatherly, even though my dad was there and I got so emotionally involved. It scared me a little bit, at that age, it scared me."
That early experience frightened Gries so much that he turned down all other offers, including roles opposite John Wayne in The Cowboys and Steve McQueen in The Reivers, telling himself, "I'm never going to do that stuff again. I'm no actor."
However, by his late teens, the acting bug had bit again and his father gave him a small part in Helter Skelter so that he could get his SAG card, warning his son, "If you ever call me again for work, I'm going to kick your ass, because you can't rely on me."
That might sound harsh, but Gries remains grateful. "It was the best advice, it was such sage advice," he admits. "I packed up my bag with $200 in my pocket and I went to New York and studied with Stella Adler."
Gries worked steadily from the late 1970s on, becoming a reliable character actor in films such as More American Graffiti, Real Genius, The Grifters and Get Shorty, while his five years on The Pretender provided a welcome and steady paycheck. And then one night, Gries, who is also a musician, was winding down after a club date by walking his dogs.
"I wasn't feeling any pain," he explains of an evening that brought him into contact with the filmmaking brothers Mark and Michael Polish. "Mike [Polish] was carrying a film can and I said, 'What have you got in the can there?'" explains Gries. "And he said, 'It's my short film. I just won Honorable Mention at the DGA.' I said, 'I want to see that film.'"
The brothers, who turned out to live five doors down from Gries and to be Real Genius fans, were only too happy to give their new friend a tape of their film and a copy of an early draft of Northfork. "You could see that they clearly had talent," Gries remembers.
The actor introduced them to producer Rena Ronson, who put the twins' career on the fast track when she agreed to produce Twin Falls Idaho, while Gries went on to act in all three of the Polishes' films, serving, as well, as either associate or co-producer. He even contributed a song to the Twin Falls soundtrack.
Gries describes his bond to the brothers as, "Avuncular or like an older brother to them. I have a very protective relationship; I want to see them do well."
He also notes the similarities between his alliance with Michael and Mark Polish and his new experience on the Napoleon Dynamite set. "I feel like all of the sudden, in the low-budget, kind of independent world, here I've gone and I've been traded to another team and we're here."
Ultimately, Gries says he relishes the chance to work in a world where the financial rewards are not necessarily great. "The fun of this kind of experience, which I think, unfortunately, a lot of people in the film industry miss, is really the adventure of making a movie that is being nurtured almost like a child and having to go through a channel where there are not millions of hands kind of massaging it to the screen," he asserts.
"This one is like a film that came out of the woods, you know, there it is and everybody's like, 'Wow! This is incredible,'" he adds. "It's a great feeling to be part of that. It makes me happy to know that a film like Napoleon Dynamite is part of my personal archive."
"If I get to do more films like Napoleon Dynamite, then [my career] has worked out," Gries concludes, offering his personal definition of success. "It's not about the money. It's not about the prestige or being recognized. It's about doing work that you really think has integrity."
When the film "Think Tank" makes its world premiere at 7 p.m. Friday as part of FilmFest KC, Cowtown audiences will catch a movie that, as of Tuesday, even its own director hadn't watched in its final form.
"We've been really up to the wire, actually, getting it for this festival," says filmmaker Brian Petersen about his first feature. "We're watching the film print (Wednesday) with the final positive sound and music. There really is no time to make changes after that before the festival. Hopefully, everything works out."
Petersen will be in town to present the film; joining him will be producers and members of the cast, including Kansas City native Jeff Runyan.
"I was friends with producer Chris Wyatt," Runyan said. "And my mom, Cathy Runyan-Svacina, was heavily involved with (FilmFest KC) so we put our connections to bring the film out for its debut. I knew Chris. We actually met each other in Italy when we were both missionaries for our church."
"Think Tank" is a comedy about a group of underachievers who have banded together to find a solution to save the pool hall where they hang out.
"They're sort of living in the past," Petersen says. "They haven't really accomplished anything. It's something of a coming-of-age but a little late in life sort of comedy."
Dedicated fans of the summer's sleeper hit "Napoleon Dynamite" might recognize Petersen -- he played Lance, the husband who couldn't bend the Tupperware. Both films share the same producer (Chris Wyatt), some of the cast (Tina Majorino, Aaron Ruell) and both were made for around $400,000.
Petersen also received some help from "Napoleon Dynamite" director Jerod Hess, who, like Petersen, is a Brigham Young University film school alumni.
"I was working and raising money for 'Think Tank' while they were trying to get money for 'Napoleon,' " he said. "They got their money, and we went up there and helped on his film. We've all kept kind of close. A lot of film schools do that. The alumni always help each other out with each other's crews. The BYU film school is a good film school; it's just not very big, very well known."
Petersen says "Think Tank" is more conventionally structured than Hess'.
"We tried not to make the same film as 'Napoleon Dynamite,' " he said. "They're both comedies. Both of the films are somewhat childlike. They're not at all the kind of the gross-out teen comedies that come out. We just decided to make some films that were somewhat aimed at the demographic that those same films are going toward but that didn't have that same content."
Petersen said there also are some special effects in the movie, which is odd for such a low-budget film.
"We sort of violated all the rules of writing an independent script," he said. "We have a large cast with multiple locations, stunts and special effects and animals. All the things you shouldn't do, we did. We had to figure out low-budget ways to pull those off."
Joining Petersen for tonight's screening and for a subsequent screening at 1 p.m. Saturday will be producers Wyatt, David Kaye, Sean Covel and Celeste Garcia, and actors David Thompson, Greg Neil and Keith Paugh.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
Note: The following pertains to an advanced screening of the movie which took place on 5/19/2004.
I can hardly believe that, twenty minutes into this movie, I was thinking to myself "This will never, ever work." The opening of Napoleon Dynamite shows no sign of a pulse; the audience was laughing at the aimless punches it threw at them, while I was rolling my eyes. However, after seeing the movie in full, it's easy to conclude that the abysmal opening act is merely a method of setting up a delightfully enjoyable movie. It's been two months since I laughed as hard as I did in Napoleon Dynamite, with March's The Ladykillers preceding it. This is a pure comedy with heart, which is a rare find in the movie industry these days. It is set to be released this June, by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and I sure hope it finds its audience.
Teenage Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder) lives with his thirty-year-old brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), and Grandmother (Sandy Martin) in the small town of Preston, Idaho. He's not a popular boy, tucking in his shirt, with his curly, red hair bobbing all over the place when he walks. His main interest is drawing pictures of ironic-looking creatures, including the "ligers," tiger-lion crossbreeds, which have ball-and chains for tails. He also claims to fight werewolves and such monsters in Alaska over the summer, when his peers will ask him about his prized activities, just for laughs. As the movie unfolds, Napoleon's eccentric, scheming Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in with him and his brother when their Granny is injured in a freak ATV accident, leading a long chain of events. Napoleon befriends the New Mexican Kid at school (Efren Ramirez), eventually helping him run for class president; his brother's internet girlfriend LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery) stops by for a visit all the way from Detroit; and he asks a cute girl to the school dance. Napoleon Dynamite isn't so much a coming of age film as it is a study of peoples' quirks. The characters in this movie thrive amazingly; with each new scene comes another joyous mannerism or event.
John Heder shines as Napoleon in every way possible. After watching a good comedy, I will often impersonate the main character, to relive the brilliant moments in the picture. That's not the case with young Napoleon Dynamite, though. Even if I were to study it for hours at a time, I do not think I could ever imitate Heder's work; it represents the most unique and enthralling performance of recent years. When simply thinking of Napoleon's voice I am tempted to chuckle--a complement I surely have never paid in a review before. Like most all great actors should, Heder made me want to see this flick again, and sometime in the future, I definitely will.
Director Jared Hess is the most essential part of the superlative execution of Napoleon Dynamite, however. He has an excellent taste in comedy, and has cut this film to perfection, nearly mastering the aspects of pacing, tempo, and rhythm. I should also complement film editor Jeremy Coon in this area; after all, it was he who forced Hess to make the necessary, tough cuts in the film. Once a punch-line is delivered in Napoleon Dynamite, the scene then quickly comes to a close; the movie is, quite frankly, not allowed to lollygag. Most importantly, this technique keeps things amusing and funny. If one is not a particular fan of a segment, it never lasts long enough to be called an endurance test. My reaction serves as the perfect example of this. For me, the mediocre opening sketches flew by quickly, even though I didn't find much liking in them.
I know that the movie is going to receive a limited release come time, but it has not been made clear yet by Fox Searchlight as to how widely they will be expanding it. If they take their chances on it, and play their cards right, then I would predict that Napoleon Dynamite will perform quite well. This is the kind of story that no viewer can resist--simple and entertaining--with no bitter Hollywood aftertaste. From a quality standpoint, Hess' motion picture has just as much potential as My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Bend it like Beckham did; whether such will be lived up to will soon be seen. If it does end up in a theatre even remotely close to you, though, seize the opportunity, and see it. Napoleon Dynamite is wacky and full of social wisdom, a one-of-a-kind experience for anyone, regardless of their preference in film.
Rating: *** [3 out of 4 stars]
Wouldn't you know? The funniest teen-related movie in years is being released as an art/specialty film -- one or two theaters per city.
"Napoleon Dynamite" is hilarious. How comfortable your laughter is, though, may depend largely on whether the film seems condescending to its central character or sympathetic.
Films like the Coen Brothers' "Fargo" and Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse" straddled that line.
Few will find the ironically named character Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) likable. The film inspects this world-class nerd as though he were a bug under a microscope.
His lips never meet, giving him a perpetually open-mouthed gape. He looks constipated and half asleep -- the weariness of 16 unforgiving years as an outsider.
He's ungainly. His frizzy orange hair somehow encourages others to clip him at random. He's always being smacked and pushed into lockers.
He and older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) live with their grandmother in a modest house in Preston, Idaho, where the picture was made.
When Granny is hospitalized after a dune buggy accident -- no doubt road rage from coping with hopeless grandsons -- the Dynamites' horror of an Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) invites himself to move in as babysitter.
This guy never got past the big football game in '82, when the coach took him out. Or never put him in. Either way, he goes right on replaying the game for anyone who will listen. He's a door-to-door salesman of herbal breast enhancements.
Everything Dynamite touches turns against him except the marginally functioning Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who runs against popular Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff) for student council president, and backward Deb (Tina Majorino), who wears her hair in a ponytail on one side.
Losers on parade? Oh, yeah. But "Napoleon Dynamite" is a deadpan fairy tale -- nerdiness made droll, with appetizing plusses, such as the year's most imaginative opening titles, and details quietly observed, such as the atrocious school lunches.
Jared Hess directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with his wife, Jerusha Hess. They and producer Jeremy Coon all met as students at Brigham Young University at the turn of the century. The famous film schools should graduate a team half as savvy.
Rating: *** [3 out of 5 stars]
The opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite displays the names of the cast and crew on food items with backdrops of horrible shag carpeting and overpowering wallpaper. I'm not quite sure why but seeing the garish oranges, blues, and greens triggered memories of my childhood. My childhood may not have been as painfully awkward as the title character's but I could certainly relate to his "I really don't give a crap" attitude.
Napoleon Dynamite centers around the adventures of Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), a nerdy kid who lives with his grandmother and brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) in Preston, Idaho. When Grandma is injured in an ATV accident, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) arrives to take care of the two brothers.
All of Napoleon Dynamite's characters are strangely out-of-sync with reality. Napoleon spends his time drawing fantasy creatures, fantasizing about being a ninja, and generally being unkempt. Kip spends his time online in chat-rooms talking to "hot babes." Uncle Rico lives in his van trying to recapture the glory of 1982, the year he almost took the high school football team to the state championship. Other than these brief descriptions, there's little to know about anyone in the film other than they're all quite bizarre. And I guess that's the joy of Napoleon Dynamite. The characters are so brazenly odd that they're immediately endearing. Napoleon is a loser but he seems to work so hard at it that one can't help but like him for his efforts.
Later in the film, Napoleon makes friends with Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the school's lone Latino student. Pedro decides to run for class president and Napoleon helps him in his effort to beat the preppy Summer (Haylie Duff) for the job. Their joint promotional methods are what one could expect from two nerdy outsiders and not the type of unbelievable stunts a typical Hollywood film might have them perform.
There's precious little story and the plot mainly exists to string a bunch of set piece skits together but, somehow, it all works. The humor is most certainly not for everyone but, if you've ever felt like a geek or an outsider, Napoleon Dynamite will make you laugh a bit louder and harder than if you haven't.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is a high school geek and describing him as a geek might not even be doing justice to the word geek. He has a big, puffy head of hair; he's tall and gangly; he wears glasses yet is still constantly squinting; he breathes with his mouth open and his bottom lip seems to stick out further than his top lip; he wears winter boots in the summer and constantly wears track pants; he draws pictures of a liger (a cross between a lion and a tiger). I could go on but I hope you get the picture.
His older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) is not much better. He is 32 years old, lives at home, wears shorts with socks hiked up to his knees and seems to think a wild night out on the town entails two hours of sitting at home and talking to chicks online. (Insert Brendan joke here.)
Napoleon Dynamite, the movie, follows a few months in the life of Napoleon Dynamite, the super-geek, and some of the key players in his life - his equally geeky brother, his "best friend" Pedro (Efren Ramirez), his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), his grandma (Sandy Martin) and a small handful of his classmates.
There's not a whole helluva lot going on in the life of Napoleon, besides the fact that his first name is Napoleon and his last name is Dynamite. He watches videos of his uncle playing football, he takes a martial arts class, he takes dance lessons and he helps Pedro run for school President. Funny? Sometimes it is humourous, sometimes it drags a bit and sometimes it is just plain foolish.
His brother, on the other hand, is great. He is a dedicated on-line dater. He also takes a martial arts class. And in a brilliant turn of events, he goes gangsta on our asses. I laughed at this one.
Overall, I would say Napoleon Dynamite is a mixed bag of nuts. There were times I laughed out loud and other time it was painfully slow and torturous to watch. I was hoping this movie would be a lot funnier than it actually was. It seemed sort of like a modern days version of "Revenge of the Nerds", but not nearly as dynamic or as funny. I am sure there are people out there who are going to fall in love with Napoleon Dynamite. I did not fall in love seeing this movie. I don't regret giving it a chance to win my heart but it quite simply was not funny enough to deserve my love.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Settling comfortably into the high-school angst genre, 24 year-old filmmaker Jared Hess' low-budget comedy, which was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival, focuses on losers.
Technically, it's a sequel. Actor Jon Heder played the same deadpan, socially-inept character, then named Seth, in a 2001 Brigham Young University student short called "Peluca." But since its audiences were sparse, few will realize that Seth has morphed into Napoleon Dynamite.
Nerdy, bespectacled Napoleon lives in rural Preston, Idaho, with his energetic grandmother (Sandy Martin), her pet llama, and Kip (Aaron Ruell), his slacker older brother who searches for love in Internet chatrooms. When he's not drawing "ligers" (lion/tiger), Napoleon's friends are two other outcasts: Deb (Tina Majorino), an aspiring photographer and Pedro (Enfen Ramiriz), a shy Mexican transfer student who impulsively decides to run for class president against the popular prom queen (Haylie Duff, Hilary's sister). Complications arise when Grandma cracks her coccyx in a dirt bike accident and macho Uncle Rico (John Gries) comes to stay with them. He's a door-to-door salesman/con man who's wistfully obsessed with a time-travel machine he bought over the Internet in hopes of re-visiting a fateful football game back in 1982.
Reminiscent of Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" and Wes Anderson's "Rushmore," this quirky, episodic homage to dim-witted, awkward, ostracized geeks is certainly a promising feature film debut. Jared Hess, his screenwriter wife Jerusha and cinematographer Munn Powell are just beginning their cinematic journey. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Napoleon Dynamite" is a curiously charming 6. It's an outlandish, goofy diversion.
Rating: *** 1/2 [3.5 out of 5 stars]
Napoleon Dynamite (Heder) is a teenage dork. Not a hey-let's-put-glasses-on-Rachael-Leigh-Cook kind of teenage dork, but a unicorn-lovin', lip-balmin' Future Farmer of America with Dragonslayer posters on the wall of his Preston, Idaho, bedroom. His tiny, lisping 32-year-old brother (Ruell) is a chat-room slave; his uncle Rico (Gries) sells "NuPont fiberwoven bowls" to farm wives and tries to time-travel back to his gridiron heyday in 1982. Like its mumbling, monotonous protagonist, this festival charmer takes its time making a point. It luxuriates in small-town kitsch (e.g., the "Happy Hands Club" pantomiming in American Sign Language to Bette Midler's "The Rose") at such length that one wonders if it isn't exploiting its characters, who are poor and rural and creepy and odd, from an arch indie platform, as do certain other more jaundiced filmmakers dealing in youth and family themes. (Todd Solondz, I'm looking in your direction.) Fortunately, writer-director Hess finally steps up in the second act and propels the story into its rightful place, celebrating the youthful underdog. And I do mean underdog, people -- we're talking stirrup pants and side ponytails and purple eyeshadow. It's not pretty. Yet the movie successfully engages issues of class and race without bobbling its offbeat, offhand mood: Napoleon's best friend (Ramirez) -- by which I mean that they exchange a few halting words -- is a migrant student from Juarez who pines for but is humiliated by the rich and perfect Big Girl on Campus (Haylie Duff, cybernetic look-alike sister of Hilary). This is the kind of movie you get when the kids from the AV Club grow out of their headgear, put down their 12-sided dice, and start making independent films. It's not always narratively on point (its origins as a 2003 short are evident from its meanderings), but it gets along to the Big Dance, to Napoleon's Big Moment, and the tres-1980s soundtrack-driven resolution all the same, and the detours are ultimately well worth the trip for the texture they provide. Heder sells the character completely, from his kinky red Poindexter hairdo to his puffy ankle boots (jeans tucked in, naturally). His every response to every situation is an exasperated slow-motion whine that's almost painful to witness, but it does ring true. Adolescents are ugly and awkward and at times real sh-- heads; they don't leap up helpfully to feed the family llama or clearly state their romantic and personal intentions. Real teenagers will run from this movie as if it were hot lava. For older and more reflective viewers, it's a quirky, fresh slice-of-life more inviting than a tater-tot pyramid.
Rating: *** [3 out of 5 stars]
Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is the quintessential nerd. A geeky, gangly boy, he looks at the world from half-closed sleepy eyes behind thick glasses, has a shock of every-which-way frizzy red hair on his head and a slack-jawed mouth that seems to be in a perpetual state of "Huh?"
Although he lives on the rolling farmland of Idaho, Napoleon seems to really live in his own private Idaho, a sort of parallel universe that exists alongside ours.
It's a place where grandma gets injured while riding her off-road motorbike across a sand dune, a crazed uncle orders a time machine online to go back to his high school football glory days, and even geekier brother Kip has grown pale from endless hours spent in an online chat room looking for his soul mate. Oh, and there's a pet llama, too.
Napoleon Dynamite, a film-festival favorite in which all this takes place, is a movie for people who wouldn't miss a day without a look at the Non Sequitur or Close to Home comic strips. You know who you are.
All others will probably find Napoleon Dynamite more befuddling than dynamite.
Yes it's contrived and silly -- Napoleon and his friends speak in monosyllables and approach nearly every oddball situation with blank stares -- but it sort of grows on you the longer it goes on.
Not much really happens in Napoleon Dynamite, yet what does happen means the world to its characters.
There aren't many jokes. It's more the sudden, surprising sight of unusual things that spark laughs -- six classmates at the front of a class signing to Bette Midler's "The Rose;" Kip on in-line skates holding a rope that's attached to the back of a bike that Napoleon is pedaling furiously.
Napoleon pretends he can do martial arts and has a girlfriend, but does not.
When he gets up the nerve to approach a shy, but sweet girl, his pickup line involves asking whether she's drinking 1-percent milk because she thinks she's fat.
More likely he's alone in the schoolyard playing tetherball or being pounced on by the school bully. A giant-sized teen who towers over his much younger schoolbus mates, he's a Northwest Ichabod Crane.
With Grandma in the hospital, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), who apparently lives in his van, is called to fill in at home.
Uncle Rico spends lots of time practicing his old football tosses, which he videotapes in a vain hope of interesting some pro scout. But he really sells plastic food containers door to door to the ladies, although later he branches out to breast enhancers.
He's also the bane of both Napoleon and Kip (Aaron Ruell) who he feels are beneath him and equally unworthy. When he urges Napoleon to get a job, it's at a chicken farm run by a pair of weathered codgers where lunch includes fly-covered sandwiches and a milkshake of raw eggs from a blender.
Forget Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
Napoleon Dynamite is THE true underdog movie. Yes, you want to laugh at Napoleon and his friends, especially new-kid-in-class Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez). He's the only kid in school with a moustache, though like Napoleon he approaches the world with a blank stare.
When Pedro decides to run for class president with Napoleon's help, it results in a wonderful small miracle starring the awkward Napoleon onstage during a school assembly. It has to be seen to be believed.
Heder and the rest of the cast approach their characters with such dead-on sincerity and naivete that they become extremely appealing.
Director Jared Hess, who wrote the script with wife Jerusha, never makes the characters ridiculous, even when they're doing outlandish things. Treated with affection, one wants them to succeed against the impossible odds they tackle.
Hess's own private Idaho is a place where geeks and nerds can hold their own and make their dreams come true. No wonder the film festival nerds loved it.
Rating: 5 out of 10
PLOT:
A big-time Idaho nerd doesn't quite fit into his high school surroundings and seems to get beat up by the jocks a lot. Then one day, he meets a new kid named Pedro and starts hanging with him for companionship. The two nerds try their best to make sense of their lives and their inability to date girls, and take part in various activities for stimulation. The first nerd's bro and uncle also take part. A few days in the life of a big-time loser...ensues.
CRITIQUE:
This film's tagline professes that Napoleon Dynamite is "Out to prove that he's got nothing to prove." A pretty cool tagline. Unfortunately, the film itself suffers from some of that slogan's intention and doesn't really have much to say, other than the story of a big-time loser kid who's funny at times, but mostly just annoyed, bored, inept, insecure and confused. If I wanted to spend 90 minutes with someone like that, I'd just watch myself in the mirror...for 90 minutes. That's not to say that the movie doesn't entertain, because it does, in some parts. There's no story per se-so basically we're just following this big nerd around for a buck and a half, as he tries to ask a girl out, gets beat out by jocks, goes back and forth with his bigger-loser uncle, helps his friend run for the school election and so on and so forth. Some have compared this film to both RUSHMORE and ELECTION, both of which I'd qualify as much better and more accomplished because those films had the laughs, the story and the quirky characters to go along with the similar themes of ostracization in high school. One of this film's coolest ditties is its opening credit sequence that had to be one of the most original ones that I'd seen in years. Good going on that front! The lead actor, John Heder, was also ideally geeky, with a certain "sleepy" quality about him that was endearing, as well as a hilarious "annoyed" way that he would finish most of his sentences, "What do you think!?!" I also liked the way he would qualify anything cool as "Sweeeeeeet".
Unfortunately, the film doesn't have too many inspired scenarios, spends a lot of time focusing on these hyper-real situations that don't sincerely reflect actual life (who walks around school with that type of zoned look on their face, how does one suddenly learn to dance so well in so little time, etc...) and ultimately didn't make me laugh as much as it wanted to. Also, this wasn't a problem in the film per se, but in what era was it set? The clothes seemed to come from the 70s, the tunes from the 80s and the Internet stuff from the 90s. That said, the audience with whom I caught the flick was in full "Napoleon mode", laughing at almost every two-bit word or look out of the chump, so if you're into lingering pauses by characters in film, and quirky situations that don't seem real, but might be funny to you, maybe you'll enjoy it much more than I did (read: arthouse). If, on the other hand, you like your comedies "straight" and don't see yourself getting into major-nerd characters who don't particularly win you over with their lame personalities, check out MEAN GIRLS instead. You also have to be in an "I don't give a sh--" mood to appreciate this movie on its quirkier level...I was in "dicky" mood, so I didn't really connect. At some point, Napoleon's even bigger, nerdier brother (yeah, pretty much every single person in this film is a loser) hooks it up with a black woman and that situation turned rather humorous, and his uncle Rico was pretty damn consistently idiotic, sexist and goofy the whole way through (dug the time-travel bit), but again, the film as a whole didn't really blow me away, particularly since I'd been hearing such great things about it since Sundance. Check it out in theaters if it sounds like your kind of film, otherwise, video/dvd might just do the trick.
Rating: 1/2 [0.5 out of 4 stars]
The protagonist of "Napoleon Dynamite" is a mouth-breathing runt who responds to everything with bizarre hostility in his voice, all too indicative of poor education or poor nutrition or both. I found the character to be downright annoying, the way his jaw hangs perpetually open as he drags action figures behind the school bus with fish line. That's prior to his engaging in such disgusting acts as stuffing tater tots in his pants. Not since "Gummo" have I encountered a film character this repulsive, and not since "Police Academy" has a film comedy been this aimless and amorphic. That is a tremendous feat. The script trots through a series of episodes, the majority of which are entirely unrelated to each other, and then ends. It's kind of amazing how the writer-director, Jared Hess, has made absolutely no effort to even give the impression that he has stringed together said episodes into a cohesive story. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is a nerd who lives with his nerd brother (Aaron Ruell) and nerd uncle (Jon Gries) in a tri-level house in a rural Idaho town. He attends high school with a nerd best friend (Efren Ramirez) and a nerd love interest (Tina Majorino). Indeed, the movie is eager to make everyone so nerdy, stupid and socially inept that every scene intended to be funny just ends up being creepy or painful, especially those involving Gries, who drives around in a carroty Dodge Santana, flirting with high school girls a third of his age. Another example: when Napoleon decides he wants to take a pretty student named Trisha (Emily Kennard) to a school dance, he sketches a portrait of her from a yearbook photo and leaves it with her mom. What results is an uncomfortable and unpleasant scene with Trisha accepting Napoleon's invitation to the dance (under orders to be polite from her mother), something she clearly does not want to do.
A number of other *things happen* through the course of the film, but I'll be damned if I can *synopsize* what happens. The film just gets worse and worse, and ultimately becomes nothing but a mindless excursion into a derivative offering of Geek Cinema, made by people who have clearly overdosed on the sensibilities of directors Todd Solondz and Wes Anderson. It's superficial at best, content to settle on awkward dialogue and body language in a movie universe where all production of clothing, furniture and technology ended in 1984. Films such as "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Rushmore" are great primarily due to a connection to be made between their characters and the audience, and their exercising of a measure of movie style. But "Napoleon Dynamite" simply repels you like a homeless man on a bus; it is uninspired, ugly, elusive of any style, and leaves you feeling duped and taken for having seen it. I dare anyone to dream up a reason to see this putrid film.
Rating: 1/2 [0.5 star out of 4 stars]
Rating: *** [3 stars out of 5]
Napoleon Dynamite is misunderstood. After all, it's not every student in Preston, Idaho who has a tight red afro, wears moon boots in the summertime, spends nearly all of his time drawing medieval creatures and plays a mean game of one-man tetherball. He has a grandma who spends all waking hours four wheeling at the sand dunes, an older brother who is forever seeking out his soul mate in chat rooms and an uncle who never left 1982. It's little wonder, then, that he never cracks a smile. But he's in touch with his one, true feeling -- he's absolutely livid.
It's because he is so consistently angry that Napoleon (Jon Heder) is directly responsible for the biggest laughs in the movie. Give him one chore -- feeding the family llama, Tina -- and he'll do it, but he'll be pissed off about it. He'll let Tina know he is, too. If he's knocked off a bicycle by taking a perfectly spiraled steak to the noggin, he's not going to be happy about that, either. It takes meeting his new best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) to give him courage to break out his shell some and forge new ground. It's Pedro, after all, who convinces him to try his hand at love one day in the cafeteria, when he delivers the following line:
"I see you're drinking 1% milk. Is that because you think you're fat?" he asks, sincerely. "Because you could pretty much drink whole milk and get away with it." To which the girl stands up without saying a word, and leaves.
As far as Pedro and Napoleon's friendship goes, it's a beautifully crafted one. Having just moved from Mexico, Pedro's single ambition is to meet pretty girls in school and he stops at nothing to achieve this goal -- even if it means running for class president. While the movie sometimes wanes in its laughs, the union between the two friends never appears to feel less than real. It's a little reminiscent of Kumar Pallana's recurring roles in Wes Anderson's films (most memorably as Gene Hackman's sidekick Pagoda in The Royal Tenenbaums).
Napoleon Dynamite has all the makings of a cult classic just waiting to happen. How much of one it becomes, however, depends on how many take to it when it hits the theater -- on 1,200 screens even, according to the number Fox Searchlight has promised. On one hand, it could be that this is the voice of a bitter outcast from the sticks who conquers all in the end, but that's giving it too much credit. All first-time director Jared Hess wants to do is make his audience laugh and he mostly succeeds to that end. The 80's references get a little tiresome, but this still has all the raw likeability that won Rubin & Ed its own following in years not too distant past. It just remains to be seen if the buzz it generated for itself at Sundance will last until it hits theaters later this year.
Rating: **** [4 stars out of 5]
The Story: From Preston, Idaho comes Napoleon Dynamite (Heder), a new kind of hero complete with a tight red 'fro, some sweet moon boots, and skills that can't be topped. Napoleon lives with his Grandma (Martin) and his 30-year-old, unemployed brother Kip (Ruell), who spends his days looking for love in internet chat rooms. When Grandma hits the road on her quad runner, Napoleon and Kip's meddling Uncle Rico (Gries) comes to town to stay with them and ruin their lives. Napoleon is left to his own devices to impress the chicks at school and help his new best friend Pedro (Ramirez) win the election for Student Body President against the stuck-up Summer Wheatley (Duff); all the while making sure to feed Grandma's pet llama Tina, and avoiding association with Uncle Rico and the herbal breast enhancers he sells door to door. Napoleon and Pedro put their skills and knowledge of piñatas, cows and drawing to good use, but it is a surprise talent that leads the two to triumph in the end.
Review:
Vote for Pedro, indeed! Pedro is my new best friend.
Hell Mission Statement #40773: NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
What the sh-- is this? An exercise in neo-postmodernism? Yes, it is that. It's also the great equalizer. A polarization force that has parted most audience members like the Red Sea sailor of a menstruating vagina. You will either hate Napoleon Dynamite to the very bottom of that bowl of Chex Mix in your soul. Or, you will strangle it with geek love. Yeah, if your name is Lenny, this will be your cinematic rabbit of choice. That's the effect it's having on certain individuals.
Scary. Scary.
One problem, though: An army of hipper-than-thou street fashionistas have called this cool, pulled straight out of the box, without even taking the needed 88 minutes to look at it in whole. Judging from some of your toutable hype, most of you wannabe cinematic art faggots are claiming an affinity for Napoleon without having delved too deep, or far, into its luscious core.
Your praise has been screeched across the American landscape like a crying jackelope, shot in the head and dying on the sidewalk. A shameful pet put to rest before it even had a chance to walk. I know exactly why this is. It's because you jerks like to say, to anyone that will listen, "I only watch Independent films at the Art Cinema." Yeah, you like to say it, but you don't mean it. And I hate you. F---ing crack whores trying to fake the cool dip...
I made my trek up that hill today. I sat in my local Art House cinema waiting to watch Napoleon Dynamite. My god, the trailers beforehand nearly killed me off before the real movie even had a chance to start. They just kept coming. My eyes were viscously waxed with some foreign crap about a Guatemalan girl having an abortion. Then there was some other film by a director named Le Cunt, about a lady in need of therapy, and the man that pretended to be a therapist. They fall in love, don't you know? It's all set to subtitles and dentist chair music that had my upper teeth aching like a knuckle bruise. These tiny morsels of "things to come" looked like parodies within themselves. They crawled across my vast mind like separating strokes exploding at the apex of my skull.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
No wonder you spacky flanges are peddling Dynamite as the must see film of the year. It's the only Independent Project playing the Art House Cinema you'd actually want to sit through. And you see it as sweet relief. You don't really care if it's good or not. You've been waiting desperately in your self-stated chair for something that wouldn't bore you into a coma. You couldn't back down and go to the Maitreyaplex for a bit of popcorn fluff. Oh, no. Then how would you sound to the overanxious ears at the Bright Spot on Sunday morning, talking so loudly that everyone can hear you? Napoleon Dynamite is great in that it gives you faggots something that you might actually enjoy. Print this up, quote whores: "Napoleon Dynamite is this year's Popcorn Flick for the Art House set."
"So, Orange? What you're saying is fine and all. But you've claimed it a love or hate enterprise. Which side of the fence are you on? Take it? Or leave it? And don't say you're middle ground, 'cause nobody wins at absolute zero!"
Me? I'm in the "take it" camp. I dug the sh-- out of this stacked crate of dy-NO-mite! Yet, at the same time, I found the overall weight of its timing a bit slow. Kind of like the great state of Idaho itself, which is canvassed with Napoleon's precious, artistic eye. First Jon Peter Lewis, and now Jon Heder (playing the part of Napoleon; he's from Salem, Oregon, which is cool as sh-- and makes perfect sense, especially if you've ever spent time there). I might have to visit this potato state aboard an Amtrak train, blitzed out of my mind on a Quilmes high. If for nothing else than to people watch; my favorite thing to do in the entire world. Almost.
That's what this movie caters to. It's like sitting down on a park bench to voyeuristically watch a bunch of freaks frolic in the grass.
There is no story. There is a through-line, which connects each scene like a dot. But literally, there's no viable plot to speak of. It has a classic structure, though. Napoleon Dynamite is a bizarre staging of tiny moments; a string of short films that live individually amongst themselves. You could throw each fabricated beat in the air, and watch them land like mixed-up puzzle pieces. It wouldn't matter in what order they fell. It's a pitch-black jigsaw. There's a very viable give and take to these proceedings. You could literally rip chunks out of its flesh, and it wouldn't matter. It's the perfect drinking film; if only that were a genre. Example: There's one scene where Napoleon goes to work on a chicken farm. This tiny breath of cinematic air has no real reason for existing. It's quite literally inconsequential to the proceedings. Yet, the film wouldn't exist without this exact type of biological moment. That's what makes Napoleon so awesome. For its entire running length, I just sat in my chair, mouth agape, dumbstruck in awe, asking myself, "What the f--- are they going to pull next." I've heard from many a source that you can see some of these jokes coming from a mile away. That type of statement is bullsh-- posturing. It is simply not true. This is one of the most unpredictable car crashes ever put to film, and the only reason you might sit there, thinking your smart, thinking you know what's coming next, is because you've already read a hundred reviews that give most of the kick-ass moments away.
"You, son, are f---ing brilliant!"
Most of these same reviews are throwing the harsh criticism that ND is a Rushmore rip-off. That director Jared Hess is trying desperately to emulate Wes Anderson. Comparisons to Wes are notable, but semi-unfair. There are slight similarities, yes. But this thing is a wholly opposing beast. I guess people have a desperate need to associate images they don't quite understand. It makes them feel good to call a certain sameness on something that stands out as odd and different. Too bad, it distracts them from looking at the entire picture.
It's easy to hold Napoleon against a blueprint of Anderson's Max Fleisher character. They're both oddballs. Sure. But Christ, people, these are two extremely different characters. If anything, Napoleon is the antithesis of Max. One is an over-achiever, the other is an under-achiever. You might actually want to hang out with Max. You wouldn't want to get near Napoleon; instead you'd rather hide in the bushes and watch him without his knowledge of your sweet peeping skills. Both Anderson and Hess over-use their neo-postmodern pretentiousness. Anderson threw a sixties vibe and hand-dragged it through the late-nineties. Hess does the same thing, only he cops an 80s feel and mixes it with Computer Chat rooms and the "current-present". There is a certain semblance being worked up between the two camps. I won't argue that...
But to be more thematically accurate, I'd rather relate Napoleon back to the works of Harmony Korine. This thing plays like a G rated Gummo. Watching it had about the same effect on me. I really like that type of Home Town Entertainment. A white trash lesson for all involved. For some reason, this also reminded me of My Body Guard. I'm not sure why. I do have another one for the Quote Whores: "Jon Heder is a Chris Makepeace for the 04s!!!" (Someone, somewhere, told me never to use three exclamation points in a row. I think it was my literature professor...No, wait. It was Dr. Mark Chilcoat.)
Where's Ruth Gordon in the lane when you need her?
Basically, what it comes down to is: Napoleon Dynamite is a character study. A great one. And I'm basically a good kid. Like I said before, though. It's not a film for everybody.
You know you're in trouble when I'm laughing. I'm a notorious non-laugher when it comes to any type of cinematic fare (I like to continually point this out). I'll admit; this bad bitch had me squeaking out barely audible chuckles at revolving intervals. And there are two moments that literally had me on the floor making noise, loudly. Thing is, I was the only one busting a kidney punch to the lungs. Actually, there were two of us in attendance that laughed at the movie. About sixteen audience members had shown up all together (maybe these fifteen other people were trying to keep a pose; this is Hollywood and you have to act rather nonchalant and uncaring to live here). Me and the other gentleman that were finding this thing humorous, though...We never laughed at the same thing. Not once. I even had someone sitting in front of me turn around and give me an off-handed glare.
I can't chuckle up the beef at the back of my throat? Sh--. I paid my admission price. Sign says it's funny. I'm not supposed to laugh, now? F--- you, guy in front of me.
Well, that's unfair. I think he was looking at me because he couldn't figure out what I thought was so damn funny. You see, there's this guy named Pedro in the film. His take on Speedy Gonzalez had me cracking up. He's, like, the funniest thing I've ever seen in a movie. I might be the only one that feels as strongly about Efren Ramirez's on-screen persona. But he had me in his hands.
"You're the only person in this school that has a moustache."
That's brilliant writing on so many obscure levels, it's incomprehensible. What kicked me in the balls, though, was one certain segue. There's this part where he shaves off his hair because he's having hot flashes. He's sitting on the lawn, with his hood up over his head. Boom, it was like a tsunami ripping across my chest. A genuine laugh squeezer. That guy in front of me didn't know why I was laughing. Neither did I, to tell you the truth. There was just something internally gratifying about seeing Pedro sitting on the lawn with that hood pulled over his head. It hurts my tongue thinking about it as I type.
The other moment that raped my sense of humor was when Napoleon's Uncle buys a time machine off of Ebay to go back to 1982. This whole segment is so deliciously f---ed up, I couldn't help but stare in chalked ice delight. The best way I can put it...If you like the Conan O'Brien Show, you're going to love almost every minute of this nasty little blue-baller. (Sorry, Blake Snyder, but I think you're going to loathe it with an iron keyboard.)
At the end of the day though, Napoleon Dynamite made me kind of sad. ND gets a girl. A cute girl. This guy is the biggest loser I've ever seen. And he lands that hot bitch from Water World (She's all grown up now). God, the way she pulls her ponytail to the side of her head; delicious. I can't even get a cockroach to sit on my foreskin. And this guy scores. So much for someone I can relate too.
Actually, a lot of critics are having a hard time relating and adjusting to Mr. Dynamite. Some say he's such a character that he'd never exist in real life. Not true. Alan Wiggley. That's not a made up name. He was the Napoleon of my school. Robert Killington, too, was quite the oddball. These were the types of people you stared at; actually thinking they may have come from another planet. I had to wonder what their home life was like. Did they act like this all the time? Were they different at home? Jared Hess offers us a chance to peer into that off-type of life. Now I know that Andrew Goodemoot behaved with the exact same mannerisms at home, in front of the refrigerator, as he did in the cafeteria. Napoleon isn't necessarily someone you'd want to spend time with. 88 minutes is enough. This is a provocative showcase. Very voyeuristic. I don't want to be these people's friends, but I do want to stare at them from behind the bus stop to see what they're up to.
I give ND a big fat fist up your mom's ass...
Also, I like that fact that it's rated PG. It's a truly funny film that doesn't cop or stoop to playing dirty pool just to tease you in. It doesn't go for the PG-13, or R rated, gross out. It doesn't need to. It stands on its own. Call it refreshing. I mean, when was the last time we saw a PG rated film that played like this and retained its integrity? Not since the mid-80s.
Thank god, and Jared Hess, for this tiny time killer. I'll watch it again, and again. And if you don't like it, you can lick the rest of the peanut butter off my taint. I think Jennifer's dog missed a few drops...
(Was that long enough for you, Chris Monfette? You #1 bastard!)
Rating: *** [3 out of 5]
Napoleon Dynamite is not like anyone else. He's a nerd, but he's not the kind of lovable nerds you usually see in movies. He's not lovable at all. He's possibly the most off-putting and annoying person I've ever seen in a film. To make him the hero of a movie that seeks to subvert the usual lovable-nerd scenario is either brilliant or a complete failure. Since I laughed, but not nonstop, I don't know what that makes this film. My friends and I were nerds in high school, but we probably wouldn't have let Napoleon Dynamite sit at our table.
Jon Heder plays the title role half-asleep, or at least he looks that way. He rarely opens his eyes; he staggers around in moon boots and ill-fitting and ill-matched clothing, slackjawed and slurring his words. Unlike most movie nerds, he has no class consciousness: he doesn't really seem aware that he's a pariah, except for when jocks slam him into a locker or put him in a headlock. It doesn't seem to bother him, though. He has no real desire to move up the food chain at his Idaho high school. He doesn't seem to have any real desires at all.
The film, too, seems to lack most basic desires. Just as there's no character arc for Napoleon, so there's not really a story arc for the movie. The bare bones of the plot are thus: Napoleon is upset when his loser uncle Rico (Jon Gries, with a bad wig), a former high school football star who is stuck perpetually in 1982, moves in after Napoleon's grandma is injured in an ATV accident. Napoleon's brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), a loser on the same scale as Napoleon, courts internet romance and helps Rico with his get-rich-quick schemes involving door-to-door sales. Napoleon's new friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who is even more somnolent than Napoleon, decides to run for class president. And Deb (Tina Majorino), a shy girl who does Glamour Shots and sells lanyard contraptions, is interested in Napoleon, who is unaware of the existence of anyone else.
Instead of a plot, we follow Napoleon around as he fails to interact with the world around him. The film is a series of short skits: Napoleon and Pedro testing milk at a Future Farmers of America meeting. Kip and Rico proving how strong their tupperware is. Napoleon and Kip attending a session at the dojo of Rex (Diedrich Bader, the neighbor from Office Space). The Happy Hands Sign Language Club recital. Napoleon attempting to get the pet llama to eat. Uncle Rico showing off his passing skills. Napoleon enlisting the help of Pedro's cousins to act as security guards for nerds. Etc.
The great thing about the film is that it refuses to cave in and make Napoleon a hero. We expect him to save the day, to win the praise of his classmates, to get the girl--he sort of does, but in his own dysfunctional way. The film's payoff is possibly the funniest dance number since Saturday Night Fever. Throughout the film, writer/director Jared Hess refuses to comment on his characters. His style makes the film eerily resemble a Disney documentary about some strange and rare animal species. I don't know what naturalists would make of Napoleon Dynamite.
I learn now that there's a five-minute scene after the closing credits. Sigh. The first time in ages that I haven't waited until the end of the credits. What was I thinking? I'm sure it was hilarious.
Grade: B
If you haven't heard of the dynamically titled Napoleon Dynamite yet, you soon will.
A glimpse at the life of a mega-geek (Jon Heder, in the titular role) surrounded by geekalicious friends and family, including dorky Internet dating service addict brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), long-ago high school football hero and current Tupperware salesman Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), quiet and astonishingly confident new classmate Pedro (Efren Ramirez, playing the most "real" character in the movie), and Glamour Shots photographer Deb (former child star Tina Majorino), the film delighted audiences at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and even touched the uber-cool folks at MTV Films, who are among its distributors. Thus, in the coming weeks you can look forward to some fun Napoleon interstitials nestled among The Real World and reruns of the MTV Movie Awards.
But does Napoleon deserve all the hype?
In terms of laughs, the movie definitely delivers. Watching it, I chuckled, giggled, tittered, and guffawed out loud more times than I can count. Often, this was due to a wonderful combination of the actors' delivery (the cast also includes The Drew Carey Show's Diedrich Bader as Rex, a hilarious send-up of cocky personal trainers/martial arts "experts") and the non sequitor lines and funny expressions in director/writer Jared Hess and co-screenwriter Jerusha Hess' script. A great example of the kind of stuff that may have you rolling in the aisles can be seen in one of the trailers currently on TV: at the opening of the film, our hero gets on the school bus and sits down. "So, what're you gonna do today, Napoleon?" a young boy in the seat across from him kindly asks. "Whatever I want to! Gosh!" replies Napoleon, sounding inexplicably outraged.
Besides its random angry nature, what makes the line and delivery even better is, of course, that this angry, disgusted tone is one we've all used, and as well as heard used, as and by teenagers.
But this is maybe all Napoleon has in common with "normal" teenagers -- though in a sense, we're all sort of like Napoleon, a little. Like him, we've all got our strange private pleasures (Napoleon's include drawing mythical creatures, playing solo tetherball, and learning the in's and out's of hip-hop dancing). Unlike films like Welcome to the Dollhouse, though, Napoleon doesn't portray its protagonist as lonely and misunderstood. Sure, he's beat up by the popular kids sometimes, but he seems to take it more or less in stride, and is more concerned with the goings-on in his own world.
In this sense, as well as in certain stylistic choices (the film's opening music, certain camera angles and shots), Napoleon's portrayal of a group of somewhat lost losers is very much in the style of Wes Anderson films like Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. There is a big difference, though. Wes Anderson's films, while often hysterical, have a certain quiet, poetic subtlety. Napoleon, on the other hand, imbues its characters with a kind of isn't-this-funny campiness, and at times, a joyous self-consciousness. It's like your high school drama club doing a play of a Wes Anderson script.
On the other hand, although it's a small, low-budget film, it's not like Napoleon's trying to go for that somber, earth-shattering indie street cred. In fact, it's refreshing to see a film that takes place in the middle-of-nowhere American heartland that isn't criticizing this place and its lack of cultural activities and such. Watching it, I realized that the only recent films I've seen that take place in states like Idaho, tend to deal with depressing, tragic circumstances (take, for example, Boys Don't Cry). Though they may be losers, the characters in Napoleon Dynamite don't seem to mind too much, and live with their idiosyncrasies in their idiosyncratic, isolated town, more or less happily. This isn't done in a sarcastic way, either; Hess isn't criticizing the "stupidity" of "country bumpkins" in this film, and even while he may use characters' behavior as something to laugh at, he never wants us to laugh at the characters themselves, but rather shows these figures to us with a smiling benevolence.
But benevolent or not, Napoleon Dynamite may not be funny for everyone who watches it. I'm not just talking about a matter of different tastes, here, but about different generations. When I saw the movie, I found myself laughing quite often. The older people around me, though, didn't seem to be enjoying themselves quite so much. They could have just been the exception to the rule, but as I thought about it, I realized that although it's anything but a mainstream Hollywood flick, Napoleon does have some "types" that my generation (people in their 20's) tend to respond to as funny almost automatically, as our forbears cracked up at hippies and beatniks. In Napoleon, there's the scrawny white guy who becomes a gangster, the ghetto-fab babe, as well as retro-eighties fashion statements. Sometimes it seems like the film relies a bit too heavily on these things; while Wes Anderson's humor is more refined and timeless, Napoleon's is like a group of kids wanted to make a funny movie and knew that these certain details would be guaranteed to draw laughs.
That's kind of a waste. Napoleon doesn't need to rely on these elements -- it's in the little things (like Napoleon's drawing of a "liger"), that Napoleon's true brilliance and uniqueness lies.
Ultimately, it may not be very subtle, but if you're looking for laughs (not to mention some unforgettable lines), to quote its titular hero, Napoleon Dynamite is flippin' sweet.
Grade: B+
Within the first ten seconds of the trailer, this comedy had won my vote -- even if this was going to be a light fun movie (which the ad somewhat suggested), it looked like the type of five-minute sketch that could actually be funny for ninety. Then when I saw a brief ad spot during the MTV Movie Awards, I had a pretty good feeling that this movie was going to be a treat. I walked into this film expecting to like it, but was quite amazed at its scope -- Napoleon Dynamite is an extremely well directed, very well told, and terrifically acted quirky comedy.
The one problem some film buffs might have with Napoleon Dynamite is that director Jared Hess obviously attended the Wes Anderson school of filmmaking. Starting with the opening titles sequence, which couldn't be any more of a blatant homage (or rip-off, depending on your view) to The Royal Tenenbaums (B+) and Rushmore's (B+) introductions, Hess has created a film that Anderson and Owen Wilson might have made if given the chance. But considering that there's barely a filmmaker out there who doesn't borrow off of other talents (Anderson probably had his own share of comparisons for his films), exclusively slamming Hess wouldn't be fair.
Napoleon is also a very obvious wink to Todd Solondz' pictures, with very offbeat characters and performances that couldn't be any more detailed. The production design (and cinematography) in almost every scene is reminiscent of Welcome to the Dollhouse (B), and one of the supporting characters, Pedro, is very much like Pagoda from Tenenbaums. However, these comparisons didn't hurt my viewing experience, as the elegant filmmaking is part of what made Napoleon such a memorable time in the theater. When you're not laughing out loud at the array of goofball characters, there are performances to marvel over, and a story to emotionally connect with.
The film revolves around the main character, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), a nerdy, social outcast who is tormented at high school for his awkward demeanor. When he meets a new kid to the school, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who is alike him socially, the two quickly become best friends. Napoleon also meets Deb (Tina Majorino), another outcast -- a quiet, good-natured girl who yearns to connect with someone. Part of the story is about Napoleon's older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), who spends much of his time chatting online with a woman he has been romantically interested in but whom he has never met. These are all characters that the public would deem as losers, and Jared Hess applies an upbeat perspective very seldom seen in films.
The film's story is simple, but what the picture does with that setup illustrates what is possible with limited resources. In a way this movie reminded me of The Station Agent (B+): with quiet, low-key settings we have an intimate look at our characters (allowing them to grow on us quickly), with very fine acting, and a story that is consistently entertaining. This film isn't as sophisticated as Station Agent, but its tone and style is partly what captivated me.
I'm not sure if Jon Heder is a nerd in real life, but either way he has given one of the best performances I've seen from someone of his age (yes, I'd even argue that he's better than Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore). His delivery as Napoleon is flawless in every scene, and it is his willingness to invest in the moment during every scene that is what makes him not only the funniest character here, but also the most lovable. If Heder's performance is not acknowledged at any of the upcoming film awards ceremonies, it's going to drive me nuts. His delivery is what every director dreams for, and I'm sure Hess is grateful that he found him.
Hess pokes fun at his characters, but he does not insult -- Napoleon is a very real, likable person, which is part of what makes this movie so funny. Had Napoleon been an outcast who hated everyone, spending his time depressed about life, this would not be a funny movie. The viewer laughs because Napoleon has become his/her friend; in reality many people like to have these fun, goofball people around -- the person might be a goof, but that's what makes them so lovable. Hess has carved a personality and a sympathy level out of these oddball characters rather than just stereotyping them -- these characters become our friends, and we want them around.
Some people will compare Napoleon Dynamite to Election (B+) and Rushmore, and on a story front this film is not as good or clever as either one. But what I admire about Napoleon Dynamite is its ability to pull you into the characters' mindsets, make you feel for them, and root for them to come out swinging in the end. The film doesn't set out to accomplish anything glorious, but with its intention being to tell a simple story with real themes (of friendship) with solid character development, backed by a very impressive visual execution, the film is an achievement, and a small treasure.