| mark (the shark) explains how napoleon dynamite just might be the dark horse contender for worst picture of the year |
| Napoleon Dynamite is kind of like a Wes Anderson picture...except without the jokes, without the talent, and without the fun. It's got the grating quirkiness down. Here is a movie about a group of unlikable characters who act like nobody would ever act and do things that nobody would ever do. A movie that exists on no level of reality except a boring, unpleasant one. A movie that thinks it's funny because it offers unreasonably socially awkward characters but fails miserably because it forgets to include any semblance of wit or humanity. Who would enjoy this movie? Apparently everyone except me and my group of friends. This is easily one of my most bizarre theater experiences ever. The audience was seriously in tears. But I can't emphasize enough: there were no real jokes in this movie. It's hard to tell what exactly people were laughing at because they laughed at every line. Sample scene: "Are you gonna finish those tater tots?" (audience laughs) "No, you can have them, Napoleon." (audience laughs) "Cool." (audience giggles) (Napoleon grabs them and puts them in his pocket) (audience fucking loses it) We had to sit in one of the front rows, so we couldn't actually see the rest of the audience laughing. Maybe it was part of the movie's soundtrack. Because I can't explain the humor there. Does that sound amusing to you? Because it's actually a much fairer representation of the movie as a whole than actually describing the plot. It's actually a particularly flattering representation of the movie as a whole because...at least that scene somehow stuck in my mind. Maybe because I'd randomly seen Wally Cleaver do something similar on Leave It to Beaver. It was actually...somehow funnier on Leave It to Beaver. God, this movie sucked. There were two things that kept me from making an all new "0" rating for the sheer badness of this film: 1) The use of "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper during the prom sequence. That song rules. 2) A genuinely impressive dance sequence by the lead character at the, uh... "finale". "Finale" in quotation marks because...this movie has no plot or structure. It begins, and then some time later it ends. Nothing special happens. The movie throws in the arbitrary get-together sequence at the end so the audience can feel some sort of closure before the credits roll...as though the whole movie had been a quest by Napoleon to hook up...as though anything in the movie had suggested that anybody should hook up with him. Whatever. Those two things were kind of cool. The rest of the movie? Really, really sucked. |
| If Napoleon Dynamite were a classic Melrose Place vixen, it would be... |
| Jane Mancini |
| "what can i say? when god was passing out brains, jane was in the back of the line getting her nails done" |
| (out of 10) |
| Note: |
| No drinking game could save this film. But god knows we tried. |
| 08/02/04 |
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| my name is napoleon and i came here to suck |
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