Movies |
Napoleon Dynamite
directed by Jared Hess
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Comedy
If you’ve seen it, you know why “chatting online with babes” or working on “killer dance moves” or “the 24-piece set” are punch lines. As is “pinata.” And “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.”
Okay, so this is a little inside. It won’t be after you see the funniest movie of 2004 — say, four and five times. [To buy or stream “Napoleon Dynamite” from Amazon.com, click here.]
The plot? You’re not going to jump with joy as I describe it.
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.
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.
To buy “Napoleon Dynamite” from Amazon.com, click here.
