Head Butler - Movies

Napoleon Dynamite
directed by Jared Hess

Now why would you buy, for $21 plus shipping, the DVD of a movie you can rent for two bucks?

Here's a way to find out: Go to your local video rental store and --- if you are lucky enough to find a copy on the shelves --- rent "Napoleon Dynamite." Assemble some friends who have never seen it. Watch all 89 minutes of it. And, the next time you and your friends get together, see if someone doesn't say "Tots" and send everyone into hopeless, stupid laughter.

Or maybe someone will draw a "liger." Or mention that he's been "chatting online with babes" or working on some "killer dance moves" or considering "the 24-piece set." Here's an easy laugh: "pinata." Here's another: "Tetherball."

And that moment when it's time to shoot the cow --- and just as the old codger pulls the trigger, a bus filled with elementary school kids passes by?

"Sweet."

And how about, after that, every time certain people have dinner, it's...steak?

Okay, so this is a little inside. It won't be after you see the funniest movie of 2004 --- say, four and five times.

Which is why "Napoleon Dynamite" is a bargain at $21 (especially because it has seriously goofy outtakes and interviews that are mad funny).

The plot? You're not going to jump with joy as I describe it. Indeed, you're going to wonder: What was Butler on? But I'll try.

Napoleon Dynamite is a nerd who lives in Preston, Idaho (population 4,682 and, as it happens, the home town of the film's 24-year-old director). He has frizzy red hair, big glasses, awful clothes, no social graces, no friends, no life, no "skills" that matter --- he's the disaster of his high school, the kid a principal would hide if Important Visitors came calling.

Napoleon has a 32-year-old brother. Who lives at home. Need I say more?

Napoleon finds a new kid to hang with. A Mexican immigrant named Pedro. Napoleon convinces him to run for Class President. That's kind of the main plot.

Well, there are some other strands. An uncle who comes to stay with the Dynamites. A girl who takes photos. A dance. But as I think about it, you could say, with equal justice, this film is about conversations in the cafeteria. And the bus. And a way of having conversations that are utterly stripped of accents and affect --- flat, deadpan conversations that are so nerdy they're cool.

That is, in the end, the point of this tiny-budget comedy, filmed with a few professional actors and a lot of amateurs in the town where, Jared Hess would have us believe, the slightly cracked is commonplace --- Napoleon is a cool dude. Yeah, you laughed at him. At the same time, you kind of suspected he had more on the ball than the kids who run the school.

But let's not get all deep and say this film is about the nerd in all of us. It's not. Indeed, it's a meaningless comedy --- it's just funny. Like Seinfeld. Or Larry David. "If I become a famous actor," says the actor who played Napoleon, "I'll never have a role this good."

He's right. No one's going to write a scene for him with Tots. Or a liger. But you have to have seen "Napoleon Dynamite" to know that.

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To buy "Napoleon Dynamite" from Amazon.com, click here.