Running time: 86 minutes
Starring: Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirez, Diedrich Bader
Rating 6 out of 10
The essence of most comedy is laughing at someone else's expense. In the case of the super nerd Napoleon Dynamite, there is certainly a lot to laugh at. The eccentric, gangly, bespectacled redhead boasts a litany of social handicaps, including a suspect wardrobe and a tactless turn of phrase. Piling so many disadvantages onto one person provides a bountiful source of humour, but he is too easy a target and in the end he becomes annoying for the very same reasons that he was amusing.
If one misfit were not enough, the film is almost exclusively populated with them. The characters' rich array of idiosyncrasies makes them figures of ridicule rather than real and the world they inhabit somewhat absurd. There are parallels to be drawn between Napoleon Dynamite and Todd Solondz's brutal and funny look at the high school hell of an unpopular girl in Welcome To The Dollhouse. But where Dollhouse was prepared to explore more subtly and deeply the troubled life of its central figure, Napoleon Dynamite's director and co-writer Jared Hess is more inclined to keep things light and superficial.
As embodied perfectly by newcomer Jon Heder, Napoleon Dynamite is an alienated awkward teenager, prone to punctuating his sentences with "sweet" and "idiot". He is being brought up in rural Idaho by his spirited Grandma (Sandy Martin) along with his older and equally nebbish brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) who spends his time on internet chat rooms in search of romance. When thrill-seeking Grandma breaks her coccyx in an ATV accident, unctuous Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in. A door-to-door salesman peddling an herbal breast enhancer, Rico still rues the day his school football coach left him on the sidelines in a critical game.
Napoleon's domestic situation is as pitiful as his school life. He is friendless but for the diminutive Pedro (Efren Ramirez) whose campaign for student body president, he is trying to help organize. Napoleon's romantic aspirations are focused on the plumpish Deb (Tina Majorino), though his efforts to woo her need some honing. "I see you're drinking 1% milk," he says at one point. "Is that because you think you're fat? Because you're not. You could probably be drinking whole milk."
For Hess, who grew up in the small town of Preston where Napoleon Dynamite is based, the charming and quirky story is obviously a personal one, depicting provincial ideals and some sense of what it's like to grow up at odds with the world around. With the help of Heder's note perfect performance he has created a character that will linger as a yardstick by which all other cinematic nerds will be judged, long after the film has faded from memory.
If one misfit were not enough, the film is almost exclusively populated with them. The characters' rich array of idiosyncrasies makes them figures of ridicule rather than real and the world they inhabit somewhat absurd. There are parallels to be drawn between Napoleon Dynamite and Todd Solondz's brutal and funny look at the high school hell of an unpopular girl in Welcome To The Dollhouse. But where Dollhouse was prepared to explore more subtly and deeply the troubled life of its central figure, Napoleon Dynamite's director and co-writer Jared Hess is more inclined to keep things light and superficial.
As embodied perfectly by newcomer Jon Heder, Napoleon Dynamite is an alienated awkward teenager, prone to punctuating his sentences with "sweet" and "idiot". He is being brought up in rural Idaho by his spirited Grandma (Sandy Martin) along with his older and equally nebbish brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) who spends his time on internet chat rooms in search of romance. When thrill-seeking Grandma breaks her coccyx in an ATV accident, unctuous Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in. A door-to-door salesman peddling an herbal breast enhancer, Rico still rues the day his school football coach left him on the sidelines in a critical game.
Napoleon's domestic situation is as pitiful as his school life. He is friendless but for the diminutive Pedro (Efren Ramirez) whose campaign for student body president, he is trying to help organize. Napoleon's romantic aspirations are focused on the plumpish Deb (Tina Majorino), though his efforts to woo her need some honing. "I see you're drinking 1% milk," he says at one point. "Is that because you think you're fat? Because you're not. You could probably be drinking whole milk."
For Hess, who grew up in the small town of Preston where Napoleon Dynamite is based, the charming and quirky story is obviously a personal one, depicting provincial ideals and some sense of what it's like to grow up at odds with the world around. With the help of Heder's note perfect performance he has created a character that will linger as a yardstick by which all other cinematic nerds will be judged, long after the film has faded from memory.
