Starring Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Tina Majorino, Efren Ramirez and Aaron Ruell.
Screenplay by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess.
Believe it or not, Napoleon Dynamite is the name of the lead character. Napoleon is a tall string bean, curly topped high school nerd. His best skill is simple survival of will and pride in the brutal world of numbskull bullies and untouchable jocks and cheerleaders. But he takes defeat in stride. It�s a certain resilience that makes him so likeable despite his acute lack of refined social skills.
The film delights in deadpan � it celebrates nerd. And is a testament that beauty can be found everywhere. There�s this absolutely lovely scene where Napoleon and several other students sing �The Rose� in sign language. The scene comes and goes with no introduction, no mention. But its inclusion adds a great warmth to the picture on the whole.
Admittedly, I watched this on cable. I�d just switched off �Dodgeball� after 20 minutes of waiting to laugh. �Napoleon Dynamite� proved absolutely delightful and refreshing and a strong statement, that a funny film doesn�t have to resort to rubbing body parts against soapy windows to keep its audience entertained.
Overall, a charming, albeit quite odd cinematic piece. Napoleon Dynamite is meticulously directed, warmly acted, and intelligently written in a dorky kind of way. If you liked �Harold and Maude� you may find that this film shares some of its quirkiness in a less in-depth but still entertaining kind of way.
There is a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor, and Jared Hess' "Napoleon Dynamite" pushes it as far as it can go. Its hero is the kind of nerd other nerds avoid, and the movie is about his steady progress toward complete social unacceptability. Even his victory toward the end, if it is a victory, comes at the cost of clowning before his fellow students.
We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of Adam Sandler make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about.
Napoleon is tall, ungainly, depressed, and happy to be left alone. He has red hair that must take hours in front of the mirror to look so bad. He wants us to know he is lonely by choice. He lives outside of town with his brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), whose waking life is spent online in chat rooms, and with his grandmother, who is laid up fairly early in a dune buggy accident. It could funny to have a granny on a dune buggy; I smile at least at the title of the Troma film "Rabid Grannies."
But in this film the accident is essentially an aside, an excuse to explain the arrival on the farm of Napoleon's Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a man for whom time has stood still ever since the 1982 high school sports season, when things, he still believes, should have turned out differently. Rico is a door-to-door salesman for a herbal breast enlargement potion, a product that exists only for the purpose of demonstrating Rico's cluelessness. In an age when even the Fuller Brush Man would be greeted with a shotgun (does anyone even remember him?), Rico's product exists in the twilight zone.
Life at high school is daily misery for Napoleon, who is picked on cruelly and routinely. He finally makes a single friend, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the school's only Latino, and manages his campaign for class president. He has a crush on a girl named Deb (Tina Majorino), but his strategy is so inept that it has the indirect result of Deb going to the prom with Pedro. His entire prom experience consists of cutting in.
Watching "Napoleon Dynamite," I was reminded of "Welcome to the Dollhouse," Todd Solondz's brilliant 1996 film, starring Heather Matarazzo as an unpopular junior high school girl. But that film was informed by anger and passion, and the character fought back. Napoleon seems to passively invite ridicule, and his attempts to succeed have a studied indifference, as if he is mocking his own efforts.
I'm told the movie was greeted at Sundance with lots of laughter, but then Sundance audiences are concerned with being cool, and to sit through this film in depressed silence would not be cool, however urgently it might be appropriate.
It's charming. It's hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It's Napoleon Dynamite -- the first feature film from 24-year-old Brigham Young University student Jared Hess -- and, if there is any justice, it's going to be huge.
Remember that kid who was always drawing mythical beasts in his notebooks? Whose hitched-high pants and tucked-in T-shirts merely served to attenuate his gangly limbs, locked in a single plane? Whose evasive, half-shut eyes complemented his permanently slacked jaw and perpetual wheeze? And who, with no apologies, panted over time machines advertised in the back of comic books and posted a sign on his bedroom door establishing "Pegasus Xing"? That's Napoleon (Jon Heder), a teenager who has reached such Olympian heights of nerdishness that he's oblivious to it, either as failure or achievement. Even as Napoleon is harangued and abused at school, tossed against lockers and left, daily, to a solo game of tetherball, he reacts with righteous indignation, utterly unconvinced that he's the problem. And for this -- for his dignity in the face of scorn, for his unabashed himselfness -- we love Napoleon Dynamite.
The movie loves him, too. In fact it's nothing less than a celebration of its central character -- hardships, foibles, bad hair, and all. It takes place in Preston, Idaho, the hometown of director Hess (who co-wrote the film with his wife Jerusha), and it catalogues, with patience and art, the disappointments and victories (however small) in Napoleon's life.
Napoleon lives with his brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who at 32 has no occupation other than searching for his "soul mate" in Internet chat rooms, in the home of their feisty grandmother (Sandy Martin), owner of an equally feisty llama named Tina. When Grandma breaks her coccyx in a dune buggy accident (truly, it's hilarious), Napoleon and Kip can hardly be trusted to take care of themselves. So Grandma sends Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a sleazy salesman caught in the glory days of 1982, when even as a benched high school football player, he "could have gone pro." As if born to the role of meddlesome caregiver, Rico immediately sets about establishing a Tupperware business, eating all of the family's steak, and ruining Napoleon's life.
Such as it is. In general Napoleon wants little more than to be left at peace with his "ligers" (combination lion-tigers, "known for [their] skills in magic"), though, like any human, he craves connection. To that end he's in luck, as new student Pedro (Efren Ramirez) appears at school and accepts Napoleon's halting friendship with nary a blink. (Short, perpetually sweating, and mustached, Pedro is Sancho Panza to Napoleon's Don Quixote.) The two have an understated connection, to say the least: "So," Napoleon mutters beneath his breath, "you and me are pretty much friends by now, right?" Unlike Napoleon, Pedro has a way with (or at least a strategy with regard to) girls: When he likes one, he bakes her a cake.
Napoleon can barely communicate with anyone, let alone girls. And when Deb, a shy student who braids gimp lanyards and runs a home glamour-shot business, shows up on his doorstep, he's confronted with the need to learn. At first Deb tries to sell Napoleon a lanyard, and he makes the ultimate geek mistake of saying exactly what he means: "I already made like infinity of those in scout camp." This, of course, is not what Deb needs to hear, and she runs away in shame.
Later Napoleon makes it up to her, in his staccato, painfully awkward way. But she doesn't mind. Like Napoleon, Deb is untroubled by appearances; instead she seeks (and sees) inner beauty. Actress Tina Majorino plays Deb like a young Lili Taylor, all buttercup sweetness and light. You want to reach out and give her a big, everything-will-be-okay hug -- though of course she doesn't need it. She already feels the love.
What a pleasure it is to watch a film that so adores its characters, and that allows them the space to be totally themselves. Though Napoleon and his friends often seem locked inside their bodies, unable to break out into authentic expression, they manage to get their points across. And whenever they do speak, or mumble, or drone, every utterance is authentic; their unbending earnestness is enough to melt even the iciest heart. When the slinky-smoove star of Napoleon's instructional dance video asks him whether he's ready to get his groove on, Napoleon, a boy any self-respecting groove has long since abandoned, says, "Yuuuus." And then he does it. He totally gets his groove on.
Ultimately there's not much in the way of a plot here; if Napoleon Dynamite has a flaw, it's the sense of loss one feels about two-thirds of the way through, when the tension has largely failed to mount. But there is so much compassion, wisdom, and comic insight that the film is hugely rewarding in any case. Deadpan irony is the rule, understatement is the lingua franca, and the result is an unceasingly accurate portrayal of real people whose quiet lives are touching and humanly grand. Napoleon, Pedro, Deb -- even Kip and Uncle Rico: All of these folks dare to dream, and their dreams are beautiful.
Napoleon (Jon Heder) is the quintessential high school misfit. Gawky and slack-faced under a red afro and windowpane glasses, he runs in a squatting shuffle, whines every single utterance and punctuates his eternal disappointment with a sigh like a slow leak on a Mack truck. With a fantasy inner life and an outsized weirdo vibe in his day-to-day routine, Napoleon is constantly pantsed, wedgied and body-checked in the halls by the bullies and buttheads of his school.
He'd be a walking sight gag in any other film, but Jared Hess makes Napoleon a special kind of hero at home in his eccentricities.
He lives with his even more socially maladroit older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), a borderline functional 32-year-old whose personal life is a schedule of Internet chat rooms. And he's raised by an extreme-sports grandmother in a shag-carpet-and-wood-panel home out of the "Brady Bunch" universe.
The nominal plot revolves around Napoleon's attraction to shy loner Deb (Tina Majorino) and efforts to help his friend and fellow social outcast, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), become class president. (Pedro's main qualification: He's the only kid in school with a mustache.) But the story is all in the character and off-balance personality of the film.
Imagine a John Hughes teen comedy remade by Jim Jarmusch and dropped into the town that time forgot. Hess doesn't deliver punchlines as much as a skewed perspective that finds humor in creative eccentricity. His poker-faced direction and the relentlessly blank performances of the high school cast give the screwy antics of the characters a deadpan, matter-of-fact absurdity.
The time-warp of the indeterminate era -- stray references to '80s pop culture collide with '90s technology, '70s thrift-store fashion and '60s garage-sale furniture -- only enhances the surreal austerity of his Preston, Idaho, setting.
A character study in personalities that defy classification, "Napoleon Dynamite" embraces its outcasts without compromising their cockeyed uniqueness. If you're sick of the gross-out gags and sex jokes of contemporary teen comedy, this defiant blast of idiosyncratic individuality just could be your tonic.
He'd be a walking sight gag in any other film, but Jared Hess makes Napoleon a special kind of hero at home in his eccentricities.
He lives with his even more socially maladroit older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), a borderline functional 32-year-old whose personal life is a schedule of Internet chat rooms. And he's raised by an extreme-sports grandmother in a shag-carpet-and-wood-panel home out of the "Brady Bunch" universe.
The nominal plot revolves around Napoleon's attraction to shy loner Deb (Tina Majorino) and efforts to help his friend and fellow social outcast, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), become class president. (Pedro's main qualification: He's the only kid in school with a mustache.) But the story is all in the character and off-balance personality of the film.
Imagine a John Hughes teen comedy remade by Jim Jarmusch and dropped into the town that time forgot. Hess doesn't deliver punchlines as much as a skewed perspective that finds humor in creative eccentricity. His poker-faced direction and the relentlessly blank performances of the high school cast give the screwy antics of the characters a deadpan, matter-of-fact absurdity.
The time-warp of the indeterminate era -- stray references to '80s pop culture collide with '90s technology, '70s thrift-store fashion and '60s garage-sale furniture -- only enhances the surreal austerity of his Preston, Idaho, setting.
A character study in personalities that defy classification, "Napoleon Dynamite" embraces its outcasts without compromising their cockeyed uniqueness. If you're sick of the gross-out gags and sex jokes of contemporary teen comedy, this defiant blast of idiosyncratic individuality just could be your tonic.
The MPAA rated Napoleon Dynamite PG for thematic elements and language.
Quirky may be the best word to describe Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder). There�s certainly nothing conformist about the Preston, Idaho high school student with the curly red Afro, oversized glasses and moon boot footwear. But his peculiarities go beyond his looks.
Napoleon is different because he�s on the fringe of the social circle, yet he doesn�t seem to mind. Unlike so many teens who�d do anything to fit in, Napoleon seems casually comfortable with where he is. And that�s what makes him, above anything else, interesting to watch.
Whether Napoleon�s unconventional habits are the result of his genetics or environment, it�s hard to know. He lives with his grandmother (Sandy Martin) who has a pet llama and goes four wheeling. He also lives with his nerdy, 31-year-old unemployed brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) who spends hours in chat rooms searching for a woman. Later, the boys� Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in as well.
Rico is one of those guys who may have graduated from high school but never really left it. He relishes his past glory days on the football field and still considers himself a buff young buck. As a door-to-door salesman, he has a rather adolescent enthusiasm for selling bust enhancing supplements.
Trying to avoid his uncle, Napoleon hangs out with his friends, Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and Deb (Tina Majorino), the neighbor girl who�s earning money for college by selling beaded key chains and shooting �glamour� portraits in her homemade studio.
Deciding they have nothing to lose, Napoleon and Deb agree to help Pedro when he decides to run for student body president against the popular Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff). Surprisingly, it�s Napoleon�s unabashed eccentricity that proves to be a pivotal turning point in the campaign.
The biggest challenge with this film is knowing whether to laugh with Napoleon, or at him. Often bullied at school and teased at home, he has experiences most of us can relate to. However, his behaviors are just odd enough to make one nervous about siding with him. Whether it helps young viewers be more sympathetic to others or not remains to be seen. For family viewing, some mild innuendo and an emphatic substitute for swearing are likely the biggest beefs parents will have.
Meanwhile, for those of us who grew up in small towns where blue FFA jackets and long, bumpy bus rides were more common than bikinis and surfboards, it�s refreshing to see a familiar high school atmosphere portrayed.
For hit-hungry film distributors seeking a bargain at the annual Sundance Film Festival (where this indie gem premiered in January), this is exactly the kind of movie to set their hearts fluttering. Made for under $500,000, Hess�s debut feature has, to date, taken more than $43 million at the US box office. It�s a handsome payout, and proof that there is hope for small American filmmakers looking to compete with their big budget compatriots.
Not that any such cynical profiteering informed 25-year-old Hess�s original gameplan: to turn his hit short film, �Peluca�, a zero-budget, comic take on his small hometown of Preston, Idaho, into a full-length, subversive skit on the typical high-school comedy. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is our focus: a teenage boy so unattractive, so awkward, so out-of-sync, so damn wrong that he ultimately endears himself as an outlaw and fully-fledged hero. The obvious parallel is Dawn Wiener in Todd Solondz�s much superior �Welcome to the Dollhouse�. Like Dawn, Napoleon does himself no favours. He wears moon boots and bad T-shirts; he likes to sketch unicorns and �ligers� (an imagined hybrid of a lion and a tiger); and he doesn�t know the first thing about friendship or romance. His dysfunctional family is equally bad: older brother Kip has the worst moustache in history and spends all day on internet dating sites, while Uncle Rico is a failing door-to-door salesman whose big dream is to return to 1982 and resurrect his stalled football career. It�s a cast of brilliant caricatures, and as such recalls the films of Wes Anderson, especially �Rushmore�.
Admittedly, much of the humour is very silly � feeding on sight gags and slapstick � and not all of it hits the mark. But there�s a serious side too. The embarrassments of school and teenage life are up there to squirm at in both shame and horror.
Resembling a less malicious Todd Solondz film, or a clean John Waters movie, Napoleon Dynamite could emerge as the cult comedy of the summer. A hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival and winner of the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival's award for best feature film, this drolly eccentric tale set in Preston, Idaho, marks the debut of an original new talent, 24-year-old director Jared Hess.
Hess and his wife Jerusha, who met as students at Brigham Young University, wrote this low-budget indie, centered on the travails of their title character, whose life, behavior and appearance are as odd as his name. Napoleon Dynamite is a high-school outcast with a bushy red Afro, spectacles, and a perpetual pained look on his face. He lives in a modest house with his dune buggy-riding grandmother and an unemployed older brother, Kip, who spends the day looking for love on the Internet. Napoleon's pathetic life, which includes daily pummelings by school bullies, gets worse when his grandma is injured in a driving accident, and his oily, macho Uncle Rico moves in. But things start to look up once Napoleon befriends Pedro, a taciturn Hispanic kid who decides to run for class president, and starts to take a romantic interest in Deb, a sweetly supportive classmate with a sideways ponytail.
The movie is virtually plotless, a mere skeleton on which to hang a series of quirky vignettes and incongruous sight gags (like Napoleon getting knocked off his bicycle by a well-aimed steak, or stuffing leftover tater tots from the school lunchroom into his pants pocket). Just about every major character in the film is a nerd, a misfit or an eccentric; the audience is encouraged to feel superior to them, but there's still something endearing about this oddball community seemingly stuck in time (at least fashion-wise). Napoleon, with his constant whining, sighing and grousing, is anything but attractive, but his modest ambitions ultimately bring dividends, whether it's the grotesque amateur artwork he uses as a courtship tool, or the solitary practice dance moves that help him pull off a big surprise.
The picture's biggest asset is its young lead, Jon Heder (yet another Brigham Young student). Look at his photo in the June Interview, and you'd never believe this good-looking guy is the same person embodying the gawky, cartoonishly homely Napoleon. He's a natural physical comedian, from the angular way he moves his body out of the film frame when beating a hasty retreat, to the clumsy fall he takes when scaling a fence. Jon Gries (The Rundown, Get Shorty) is also fun as the blustering Rico, who sells herbal breast enhancers door-to-door and has never fully recovered from his team's big championship football defeat way back in 1982. Aaron Ruell's Kip is, if anything, even nerdier than his much younger brother, and his subplot pays off with a big laugh once he meets his Internet dream girl. In the role of Pedro, Efren Ramirez manages to turn his earnest deadpan into an oddly effective comic style. Tina Majorino, a child star in such films as Waterworld and When a Man Loves a Woman, is adorable as the slightly off-center Deb, while Haylie Duff (sister of Hilary) easily slips into the role of Pedro's rival for class presidency, high-school golden girl Summer Wheatley.
Whether audiences laugh at or with them, the motley denizens of Preston, Idaho, and Napoleon Dynamite seem poised to win a devoted fan base.
The titular hero of Napoleon Dynamite is a tall, gangly, exceedingly odd boy who's always being slammed into lockers or getting hit in the face by flying objects or suffering some other sort of humiliating indignation (even his pet llama treats him with disdain). A senior at Preston High School, Napoleon goes around drawing sketches of ligers and unicorns, or babbling about the Loch Ness monster and nunchuks. His favorite sport is tether ball (a perfect game for loners), his wiry red hair always looks as if he just got out of bed, and his signature item of clothing is a pair of oversized moon-boots -- a natural accessory for someone so relentlessly strange, he might as well be a visitor from another planet.
Nerds are a familiar fixture in movies about high school, but in this wry, deadpan comedy, Napoleon is just one in a procession of weirdos. Napoleon Dynamite marks the debut of director Jared Hess, who also co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Jerusha, basing it on people he knew while growing up in tiny, flat Preston, Idaho, where the film is set. Hess' attitude toward the town and its people is reminiscent of Alexander Payne's portrayal of Omaha in About Schmidt: Often, it's hard to tell if Hess genuinely likes his characters or is simply out to mock them.
The answer is a little of both. Napoleon Dynamite has no problem mining laughs out of Napoleon's 32-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), an unemployed homebody who brags about the number of hours he spends talking to girls in online chat rooms; or Napoleon's creepy, toupee-loving uncle Rico (Jon Gries), who buys a time machine on eBay so he can travel back to 1982 and relive his high-school football days; or even Napoleon's sole friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez), the school's only Hispanic, a slow-witted mouth-breather running for student council president.
But the movie never looks down on its eccentric characters: Hess simply regards them, with amusement but without judgment, as they revolve around Napoleon, alternately stoking and pacifying his inner geek-rage. Like David Gordon Green's George Washington, Napoleon Dynamite is more interested in behaviors and its small-town milieu than an actual story. What little plot there is -- the election, a homecoming dance, the door-to-door selling of Tupperware products -- unfolds slowly and episodically, like life in Preston itself. Occasionally, time really does seem to stand still.
As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation. Played by newcomer Jon Heder (a Brigham Young University student and former classmate of the director), Napoleon walks around with his shoulders thrust forward and his head pointing down, like a defensive tackle poised to ward off whatever new disaster life is preparing to throw at him. Napoleon is often cranky and irascible, like a misfit unhappily resigned to the cosmic joke being played on him.
But Heder also lets us see the hopeful, fiercely independent soul lurking inside. When Napoleon compliments a girl by telling her she should drink whole milk instead of skim, or stands in front of the entire high school and performs an uninhibited, herky-jerky dance to Jamiroquai, you get the feeling that while this formidably ugly duckling may never get his own storybook transformation, he'll still turn out all right.
Ridicule rears its ugly head in this dreary comedy that was a most unlikely hit at this year's Sundance Festival.
Preston, Idaho is the scene of the title character's miserable existence. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is the consummate nerd, a geek so un-chic that his own red-meat eating relatives can't stand the sight of him. They're no picnic either: a slow-witted grandma who's kickin' it off-road with her dirt bike; a sad-sack loser of an uncle who sells door-to-door whatchamacallits, and a cranky sib who comes to life in the sleazy privacy of Internet chat rooms.
Napoleon navigates the tricky travails of Preston High with a bitter stupidity that's positively grating. All the cliches are accounted for: the popular girl (Hilary Duff's little sis, Haylie) who turns Napoleon's advances down cold; a sizzling passion for the misunderstood art of tetherball; and equally cretinous buddy, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who claws his way up from social pond scum, leaving Napoleon behind to wonder where it all went wrong. Zzzzzzz.
There's a fine line between humor and humiliation. Pedro's sad demeanor as he strives for romantic gusto and mounts a campaign for class president invites censure and scorn, not laughs. "Election" managed to sling its politically wicked bows and arrows with a dark edge that was both stylish and witty. "Napoleon" plays it ignominiously, mistaking insults for jests and racism for narrative guile.
Director Jared Hess' tone is mockingly mean-spirited, making it virtually impossible to care for his motley crew of misfits. Ugh.
Napolean Dynamite's been accurately described to me by more than one person as a movie that makes you go, "Huh? O... K..." while you're watching it, only to have it grow funnier in hindsight. And while this is actually true, I can't really say I'm a fan of the movie. It feels like a caricature of dorkdom that isn't saying anything about dorkdom, and its characters are too extreme overall to form any sort of connection with. In the end, the titular loser is just a freak show, a shallow, disposable piece of pop culture (I mean, how different is a character like this than, say, someone like William Hung?). "March to the beat of your own drum," the movie may say, "but we will laugh at you." This is not to say one should feel guilty chuckling at the social misfits on parade here; it's just that there isn't anything more to it than that. That the film is shot mostly as a destinationless series of gags is something to admire as a counter to the usual; that the series of gags might as well be 90 minutes worth of the same comedy show skit is lamentable and tedious. Also, I may be one of the few people on the planet who doesn't like the acting job by Jon Heder -- I always got the feeling he was smarter than his character, and that hurt his believability.
"Napoleon Dynamite" was the big buzz hit at the Sundance Film Festival in January, but, honestly, any movie that shows at midnight at 7,000 feet above sea level has already had much of its work done for it. Now that this shoestring oddity has descended to the lower altitudes, it can be seen for what it is: an inspired dead-end stunt that keeps delivering snarky laughs far longer than it has any right to. The film's attitude remains high, and it probably wouldn't hurt if the audience was too.
Directed by Brigham Young University film graduate Jared Hess and written with his wife, Jerusha, "Napoleon" suggests Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse" stuffed into the confines of an MTV interstitial skit. In segments so deadpan as to seem disconnected, the film sketches out the dire adolescent life of the title character (Jon Heder), a gangly Idaho Brillo-head whose nerdiness has achieved cosmic proportions.
Napoleon lives in ranch-house misery with his dirt-biking grandma (Sandy Martin), her pet llama Tina, and his 32-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), a scrawny ankle-sock-wearing shut-in who spends all day chatting up "babes" on the Internet. (The brothers' sissy-fights are a highlight of the film's early scenes). He's a figure of derision to his schoolmates -- especially queen of mean Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff, already well on the road to becoming sister Hilary's evil B-movie twin) -- but Napoleon is too ornery to be a sad sack. His eyes screwed shut behind aviator glasses, arms and legs jutting out like a grasshopper's, the character just seems deeply and comically exasperated. How was school? someone asks. "Worst day of my life," Napoleon barks in response. "What did you think?"
He's a cartoon, in other words, but so peculiar and unique as to be nearly heroic. Plus, he has a way with women. "I see you're drinking 1 percent," Napoleon tells a girl. "Is that because you think you're fat? You could probably drink whole milk."
"Napoleon Dynamite" keeps bringing on the freaks, to the point where the estate of Diane Arbus should arguably have been cut a check. In addition to Napoleon and Kip, there's their Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a toupee'd ladies man whose latest shady business venture is selling herbal breast enhancers door-to-door; new kid Pedro (Efren Ramirez), another cafeteria outcast who mounts a surprising bid for student council; Ilene (Ellen Dubin), a Tupperware-obsessed housewife; and Deb (Tina Majorino), Napoleon's possible love interest and a portrait photographer whose instructions to her subjects run along the lines of "Imagine you're in the ocean surrounded by tiny seahorses."
There's a lot more of this -- every scene is a brightly lit 1950s postcard of precision kitsch -- but Hess keeps the laughs coming with timing worthy of Jim Jarmusch and a narrow but controlled performance by Heder as the film's King Geek.
Be warned, though: Some people find this movie cruel in the extreme -- an exercise in empty style that pins its misfits to the wall like captured butterflies. By contrast, its fans (and I'm one, with reservations) know that what makes Napoleon a hopeless spazzola is also what makes him better than all the Summer Wheatleys. He just hasn't realized it yet.
Similarities to "Welcome to the Dollhouse" are obvious, not to mention the entire oeuvre of Wes Anderson. "Napoleon Dynamite" is the more optimistic film, though, and also the lesser one. What remains to be seen is whether Jared Hess has another movie in him -- a real movie, about real people.