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 Chris' Review: Napoleon Dynamite was as fun as it was painful. I don't know about the rest of you (wait, yes I do.. I know exactly who I'm writing this review for!) but Napoleon Dynamite tends to hit home for me. There was just far too much that was familiar to me in this film. From the bullies to the bad clothing. From the bad artwork to the pathetic attempts to win over the girls. The film sparkles in it's unique characters, simple yet profound plot, and ubiquitous settings; but, it survives solely on the direction. Jared Hess created a simple little script and then peppered it with the most obnoxiously geeky and eccentric characters he could find. Then, rather than try to make everything mix together into a smooth soup, he allowed each character to remain themselves throughout the movie. Like a snapshot of real life, but blown up to billboard size to let us really see the strangeness on each piece of celluloid. The only failing in the direction would be that certain sections really seemed to drag. I was left waiting for something to happen. As with most independent films, oft times the Hollywood machine can add things like continuity or momentum. Both were significantly lacking. Some of it added to the feeling of awkwardness of the characters, but more often than not I just wanted to get to the next scene. Napoleon himself doesn't have some major life changing experiences. He has everyday experiences and deals with them as only Napoleon Dynamite can. He lives inside a fantasy world, where "ligers" are his favorite animals and the local gang is interested in him because of his bo staff skills. Yet his eccentricities far outweigh his fantasy life in terms of weirdness. That's the beauty of nearly all of the characters in Napoleon Dynamite. His brother, Kip, is practicing to become a cage fighter in his fantasy life... but in real life he's a computer nerd who spends all his time in chat rooms and finally meets and falls in love with a 6 foot, blonde, black woman. Fact is stranger than fiction becomes the rule. Then there is the setting. We have 90's technology, coupled with 80's pop references, 70's clothing, and 60's furniture. Just an amalgam of time.. so that you're left wondering when it's supposed to be set. It adds to the uneasiness of the film and makes the eccentricities of the characters easier to swallow, creating an environment that is just as strange as the people who live there. The acting in the movie is top notch, but never overdone, which would have been easy with the characterization of the leads. Someone really needs to think about hiring Jon Heder (Napoleon) in some more movies. I really want to see how versatile he is. You're always left feeling for the characters... not feeling sorry for them, but understanding, because they make you believe what's happening, and you've been there, so you'd know. On top of everything else, the movie reminds you just how awkward you felt in high school. It's like a John Hughes movie for the X-sect. There are moments in the movie for everyone, where you specifically remember something in your past that was painfully familiar. You cringe at the absurdity of some of the actions, because you did something just as absurd. Bad come-backs, lame insults, attitude for no reason... or maybe it's just me that feels like someone was taking notes during Sophomore year. All in all, I highly recommend seeing Napoleon Dynamite. It won't change your life, but it will entertain and remind you how awkward adolescence can be. I give it 6 thumbs up. I slight downplay for the momentum issue... other than that, I can see this movie becoming a cult film (especially considering the clientele I had to sit with during our screening.) Yeah, I'll be picking up a copy.   Jim's Review: Everyone knows someone like Napoleon. That is, if you're fortunate enough to not BE Napoleon. Awkward. Geeky. Possessed of about as much fashion sense as social grace (read: none). Perpetually living in a Walter Mitty-style fantasy world in an attempt to escape his own abject reality. Wrestling with daily issues that would cripple most, and emerging seemingly none the worse for the wear. Every high school...EVERY high school...has at least one Napoleon Dynamite. Which makes one wonder if every misfit outcast has a back story half as entertaining. Attempting to summarize the plot to this film completely misses the point. After all, if aliens attempted to divine knowledge of the human species through Hollywood's typical output, they would assume every earth woman was an amped-up bombshell, every man was good-looking and rich, and shit blew up constantly. The only interesting things that ever happened to anyone could be summed up in tidy 2-hour narratives complete with introductions, escalations of conflict, resolutions, and denouements. Do you know anyone like that? The truth is, with some folks, it's not what they do that makes them interesting. It's simply who they are. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is the archetype of the social square peg, even in his drab, colorless, style-free, arrested-development "town that time forgot". His unruly mop of curls defies all attempts at taming. His huge, heavy glasses frame forever-squinty eyes, which he never uses to make contact with comeone else's. His pendulous, petulant bottom lip perpetually hangs open. His wardrobe is by Goodwill. He is cannon fodder for every musclehead jocko in school, who shove him into lockers with almost absent-minded indifference. Yet, in the fertile playgrounds of his mind, he spends his summers hunting wolverines in Alaska, is an expert martial artist, and women everywhere are powerless to resist his charisma. Anyone who's ever been in the wrong clique, and I'd be willing to wager that's most of us, both pities and sympathizes with him. He is warm and funny, but he has no idea he's either. His total cluelessness is key to his charm. The audience is confronted with the dichotomous realization that, as fun as he is to watch, he'd be just as NOT fun to actually know. And that's not a slap...He'd just be exhausting to try to have any sort of a relationship with. And it's impossible to accurately describe why. Napoleon's home life is scarcely better than school. His much-older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), isn't much of a role model. He's in his thirties, and still lives at home. He's slight, short, fey, has a weak, droopy moustache and thinning hair, and spends all of his time online, "chatting with babes." Grandma (Sandy Martin) is a crusty, ATV-riding daredevil. Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) has a terrible wig, a worse wardrobe, and spends more time pining for the glory football days of his youth than he spends doing everything else combined. Add Tina the Llama in the backyard, and you have a family that really puts the "fun" in dysfunctional. That's not to say that anyone is played for cheap, slapsticky laughs. Nobody is a caricature or cardboard cutout. They're simply allowed to be who they are. Which ends up being weirdly, quirkily, entertainingly REAL in the way only exceptionally well-defined characters can be. We neither laugh at NOR with these delightfully weird people...But we still laugh. Napoleon seems mostly to amble through his strange life, existing without really living. He struggles with the same issues most teens do...But has neither the tools to make sense of the convolutions of adolescence nor any inkling whatsoever about how to find or develop them. Yet, he still seems fine with that, likely because he has no idea whatsover that he shouldn't be, and his paradoxically simultaneous struggle / apathy is fascinating to watch. He just sort of goes through the motions of life...That is, until the day Pedro shows up. Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez), a sleepy-eyed, impressively-moustached kid with a killer bike and a laid-back attitude comes to Napoleon's school as a transfer student. Seemingly without intending to, he and Napoleon form an unconventional, oddly distant bond that's something like - but not exactly - friendship. They just sort of seem to throw in their lots together based on some sort of mutual, unspoken understanding. Pedro is a bit more outgoing than Napoleon, mostly because he seems largely not to care what people think of him. When he's rejected for a baked-in-a-cake dance date invitation by Summer (Haylie Duff, a veritable clone of her little sister Hillary), the obligatory vacuum-headed popular blonde tart/cheerleader, he takes it in stride. He just shrugs, and asks the craft-loving, creative wallflower Deb (Tina Majorino) instead. Eventually, when he decides to run for student body president, the choice is made with a shrug rather than a proclamation. The events that follow are secondary to the people that propagate them. The characters in this film ARE the film. They are sad, pathetic, pitiable, triumphant, ridiculous, believable, shocking, over-the-top, understated, reserved, balls-out, flawed, perfect, and quirkier than any seven indie musicians combined. But above all, they're real. They stand as some of the most believable humans ever committed to celluloid. We KNOW these people. And their complete, total suspension-of-disbelief humanity is the reason the film has earned 100 times what it cost to produce. The best point I can make about this film is this: After the credits, a couple of jarhead Johnny Football types a few rows over stood up, and proclaimed "Napoleon Dynamite" "...the fuckin' stupidest movie I've ever seen." The unintentional depth in that statement is staggering. The moment he said it, my chest swelled with geek pride. Like a war veteran, I wanted to stroll over to him, narrow my eyes, and say, "Yeah...You don't get it. You weren't THERE." The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I'd just spent two hours watching an unrepentant goon engage in much the same delusional, baseless self-aggrandizing. I made the conscious decision NOT to ingratiate myself into the subtext of his attitude. Besides, it's not like he would've understood it anyway. Welcome to the world of independent film, Asshole. If it's too challenging for you, you're welcome to watch whatever current movie's trailer features tits and explosions in copious abundance. Might be more your speed. I'm giving "Napoleon Dynamite" 9 thumbs up. It nails the precise tone and timbre of adolescent awkwardness, never flinching from nor trying to dress up the stark realities of growing up geek. It is an unfailingly honest portrayal of a specific span of time in one weird kid's life, free of anything resembling contrivance or window dressing. Like Napoleon himself, the movie doesn't care if you accept it or not, it's going to exist on it's own terms, ignorant of any other way to exist. Like the tagline says, he's out to prove he's got nothing to prove. Rock on, Brother. Or, don't. Y'know...Whatever. BackHome - Info - Reviews - Map - Message Board - Photo Album |
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