Napoleon Dynamite Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)July 12th, 2004
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
Directed by Jared Hess, written by Jared and Jerusha Hess
PG, 86 minutes
NOTHING DOING
Boredom is like catnip to some filmmakers. Nothing stirs up the sludge of their creative juices like the prospect of people with nothing to say and nothing to do not saying it and not doing it. I offer this as a working axiom: a movie about boring people being bored is very likely to be boring.
Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder) is a gawky, gangly teenager in Preston, Idaho, the hometown of the movie's 24-year-old director Jared Hess and his co-writer wife Jerusha. The filmmakers are not long out of high school themselves, and their debut film is a look back at the interminable agonies of school days through the person of Napoleon. He's a social outsider, a slacker virtually immobilized by ennui, an awkward kid with a shambling gait, a head of carroty curls, and a mouth shaped like a pork-pie hat. He lives with his even-nerdier 30-ish brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), and his feisty, motorcycle-riding Grandma (Sandy Martin). He seems to be the only kid his age to ride the school bus, and sits there like a sight gag towering above the little kids, waiting to be spoken to so he can respond with withering scorn ("What are you going to do today, Napoleon?" "Anything I want to! Gosh!")
When Grandma fractures her coccyx jumping her Harley on the dunes, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) comes to babysit the boys. Rico, like the Hesses, is looking back with nostalgia at his high school years. That was the peak of his now-fortyish life, when he played football and almost won the state championship ("If Coach had only put me in in the fourth quarter...") He videotapes himself throwing passes, and throws passes of another kind in his job as a door-to-door salesman of plastic containers and a herbal breast enhancer.
The main plot thread of Napoleon Dynamite involves Napoleon's managing the campaign for student body president of his only friend, the slow-talking, slow-thinking Mexican immigrant Pedro (Efren Ramirez). Pedro, like Napoleon, is so non-expressive he barely moves his mouth when he talks, but he is the only kid in school with a mustache, which is credentials enough for tossing his hat in the ring. Being Pedro's campaign manager taps into reserves of action and determination not much used in Napoleon's life to this point, and it climaxes in a rousing display of talent and creativity that is so wildly out of left field that it's as if another character has been introduced, as if John Travolta has done a walk-in and taken over Napoleon's body. There's also something of a romantic thread, involving Deb (Tina Majorino), a girl who undergoes a similar personality transplant during the course of the movie.
There are funny moments, and signs of a nascent creative potential, in Napoleon Dynamite. It's encouraging to see a feature film of this assurance from filmmakers on the sunny side of the quarter-century mark, and you've got to love the names Jared and Jerusha, which sound like something out of Star Wars. The Hesses condescend to their characters, playing them for laughs, while at the same time affecting an attitude of not caring, pretty much as the characters themselves do. There are in fact plenty of events in the movie, but they take place in that slack, bloodless atmosphere that works like hemlock on character and viewer alike. Nobody in the movie seems to have much fun, with the exception of Granny before the accident, and the bullies who slam Napoleon into his locker at school.
But audiences at Sundance (where the movie was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize) apparently had a lot of fun with it, and so have many reviewers. Heder's performance in the title role struck me as profoundly uninteresting, but at the same time there is talent legible between the lines. Ruell's Kip is more faceted, and his transformation from internet geek to hipster geek has the satisfaction of actually coming out of something understandable. The most interesting work comes from the cast's most grizzled veterans, Gries (Twin Falls, Idaho) and Majorino (who at 19 has an impressive string of credits that includes Waterworld and Andrew Shea's Santa Fe). Gries captures the painful self-awareness of failure that lurks beneath Uncle Rico's macho swagger. His internet purchase of a time machine to transport himself back to 1982 is a shallow gag, but the yearning for that time of almost-greatness in Rico's life is made palpable by Gries. Majorino survives a mystifying character leap from painfully shy door-to-door salesgirl to fairly assured young lady with a goal-oriented interest in Napoleon.
Movies, like any art form, are largely a matter of taste. Whether or not your taste runs to the sort of slack-jawed, slow-witted world that the Hesses are offering here, it's probably worth keeping an eye on them. They could be heading toward the creative company of such filmmakers as Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse) and Wes Anderson (Rushmore). For now, if boredom turns you on, Napoleon Dynamite could light your fuse.
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