Napoleon Dynamite Review
by Andy Keast (arthistoryguy AT aol DOT com)July 13th, 2004
Napoleon Dynamite (2004): 1/2 out of ****
Directed by Jared Hess. Screenplay by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess. Starring Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Tina Majorino, Efren Ramirez and Aaron Ruell.
by Andy Keast
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.
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