Review: Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Susan Granger
Settling comfortably into the high-school angst genre, 24 year-old
filmmaker Jared Hess' low-budget comedy, which was a hit at the Sundance Film
Festival, focuses on losers.
Technically, it's a sequel. Actor Jon Heder played the same deadpan,
socially-inept character, then named Seth, in a 2001 Brigham Young University
student short called "Peluca." But since its audiences were sparse, few will
realize that Seth has morphed into Napoleon Dynamite.
Nerdy, bespectacled Napoleon lives in rural Preston, Idaho, with his
energetic grandmother (Sandy Martin), her pet llama, and Kip (Aaron Ruell), his
slacker older brother who searches for love in Internet chatrooms. When he's
not drawing "ligers" (lion/tiger), Napoleon's friends are two other outcasts:
Deb (Tina Majorino), an aspiring photographer and Pedro (Enfen Ramiriz), a shy
Mexican transfer student who impulsively decides to run for class president
against the popular prom queen (Haylie Duff, Hilary's sister). Complications
arise when Grandma cracks her coccyx in a dirt bike accident and macho Uncle
Rico (John Gries) comes to stay with them. He's a door-to-door salesman/con man
who's wistfully obsessed with a time-travel machine he bought over the Internet
in hopes of re-visiting a fateful football game back in 1982.
Reminiscent of Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" and Wes
Anderson's "Rushmore," this quirky, episodic homage to dim-witted, awkward,
ostracized geeks is certainly a promising feature film debut. Jared Hess, his
screenwriter wife Jerusha and cinematographer Munn Powell are just beginning
their cinematic journey. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Napoleon
Dynamite" is a curiously charming 6. It's an outlandish, goofy diversion.
==========
X-RAMR-ID: 38004
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1289534
X-RT-TitleID: 1133050
X-RT-SourceID: 742
X-RT-AuthorID: 1274
X-RT-RatingText: 6/10
Steve Rhodes
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is cast with a bunch of unknowns -- actors who are unknown
for good reasons. Like a reject for a TV movie, the film is an MTV production,
although why they thought it deserved a theatrical release is beyond me. I
suspect that they hoped audiences would embrace it as this generation's REVENGE
OF THE NERDS. The lifeless production has little story development in
evidence. Basically it is just a slice of loser life at a rural Idaho high
school. In this school -- you will be shocked to discover -- the dorks aren't
popular and have trouble getting elected president of the student body. (Stop
me if you've heard this before.) These guys with no social graces, who act
like stoners without the need for drugs, also have difficulty in getting the
popular girls to go out with them.
A better title for the movie might be DORK AND DORKIER, as Napoleon Dynamite
(Jon Heder) and his buddy Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a couple of DOA students, try
to cope with the rigors of their high school's social structure. The script is
so lame that it is unable to come up with a single credible villain to somehow
mistreat our misfits and thereby gain our sympathy. Actually, we'd probably be
rooting for the bad guys, if there were any.
Something like a reverse of LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, the movie makes food so
unappealing, especially meat, that it could be used as a recruitment film for
Vegetarians International.
In his usual deadpan style, Napoleon sums up NAPOLEON DYNAMITE best in a
comment he makes about his uncle's prized home video, one of his uncle tossing
football after footfall into the distance. "This is pretty much the worst
video ever made," Napoleon complains in disgust. I know exactly how he feels.
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE runs 1:26. It is rated PG for "thematic elements and
language" and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up.
The film, which is already playing in limited release, opens nationwide in the
United States on Friday, June 18, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be
showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
Email: Steve....@InternetReviews.com
***********************************************************************
Want free reviews and weekly movie and video recommendations via Email?
Just send me a letter with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
==========
X-RAMR-ID: 38025
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1289699
X-RT-TitleID: 1133050
X-RT-SourceID: 703
X-RT-AuthorID: 1271
X-RT-RatingText: 1/4
JoBlo
RATING: 5/10
http://www.joblo.com/napoleondynamite.htm
For more reviews and daily movie news updates, visit http://www.joblo.com/
PLOT:
A big-time Idaho nerd doesn't quite fit into his high school surroundings and
seems to get beat up by the jocks a lot. Then one day, he meets a new kid named
Pedro and starts hanging with him for companionship. The two nerds try their
best to make sense of their lives and their inability to date girls, and take
part in various activities for stimulation. The first nerd's bro and uncle also
take part. A few days in the life of a big-time loser...ensues.
CRITIQUE:
This film's tagline professes that Napoleon Dynamite is "Out to prove that he's
got nothing to prove." A pretty cool tagline. Unfortunately, the film itself
suffers from some of that slogan's intention and doesn't really have much to
say, other than the story of a big-time loser kid who's funny at times, but
mostly just annoyed, bored, inept, insecure and confused. If I wanted to spend
90 minutes with someone like that, I'd just watch myself in the mirror...for 90
minutes. That's not to say that the movie doesn't entertain, because it does,
in some parts. There's no story per se-so basically we're just following this
big nerd around for a buck and a half, as he tries to ask a girl out, gets beat
out by jocks, goes back and forth with his bigger-loser uncle, helps his friend
run for the school election and so on and so forth. Some have compared this
film to both RUSHMORE and ELECTION, both of which I'd qualify as much better
and more accomplished because those films had the laughs, the story and the
quirky characters to go along with the similar themes of ostracization in high
school. One of this film's coolest ditties is its opening credit sequence that
had to be one of the most original ones that I'd seen in years. Good going on
that front! The lead actor, John Heder, was also ideally geeky, with a certain
"sleepy" quality about him that was endearing, as well as a hilarious "annoyed"
way that he would finish most of his sentences, "What do you think!?!" I also
liked the way he would qualify anything cool as "Sweeeeeeet".
Unfortunately, the film doesn't have too many inspired scenarios, spends a lot
of time focusing on these hyper-real situations that don't sincerely reflect
actual life (who walks around school with that type of zoned look on their
face, how does one suddenly learn to dance so well in so little time, etc...)
and ultimately didn't make me laugh as much as it wanted to. Also, this wasn't
a problem in the film per se, but in what era was it set? The clothes seemed to
come from the 70s, the tunes from the 80s and the Internet stuff from the 90s.
That said, the audience with whom I caught the flick was in full "Napoleon
mode", laughing at almost every two-bit word or look out of the chump, so if
you're into lingering pauses by characters in film, and quirky situations that
don't seem real, but might be funny to you, maybe you'll enjoy it much more
than I did (read: arthouse). If, on the other hand, you like your comedies
"straight" and don't see yourself getting into major-nerd characters who don't
particularly win you over with their lame personalities, check out MEAN GIRLS
instead. You also have to be in an "I don't give a shit" mood to appreciate
this movie on its quirkier level...I was in "dicky" mood, so I didn't really
connect. At some point, Napoleon's even bigger, nerdier brother (yeah, pretty
much every single person in this film is a loser) hooks it up with a black
woman and that situation turned rather humorous, and his uncle Rico was pretty
damn consistently idiotic, sexist and goofy the whole way through (dug the
time-travel bit), but again, the film as a whole didn't really blow me away,
particularly since I'd been hearing such great things about it since Sundance.
Check it out in theaters if it sounds like your kind of film, otherwise,
video/dvd might just do the trick.
Where's JoBlo coming from?
American Splendor (6/10) - Election (7/10) - Ghost World (9/10) - Go (9/10) -
Igby Goes Down (8/10) - Mean Girls (6/10) - Never Been Kissed (6/10) - The
Royal Tenenbaums (8/10) - Rushmore (9/10)
Review Date: June 15, 2004
Director: Jared Hess
Writer: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess
Producers: Chris Wyatt, Jeremy Coon, Sean Covel
Actors: John Heder as Napoleon
Efren Ramirez as Pedro
Jon Gries as Uncle Rico
Genre: Comedy
Year of Release: 2004
-------------------------------------
JoBlo's Movie Emporium
http://www.joblo.com/
-------------------------------------
(c) 2004 Berge Garabedian
==========
X-RAMR-ID: 38060
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1289991
X-RT-TitleID: 1133050
X-RT-SourceID: 573
X-RT-AuthorID: 1021
X-RT-RatingText: 5/10