He’s out to prove he’s got nothing to prove.

When this film was first shown during the Sundance festival in January 2004, the crowds loved it. Six months later it got a limited release to theaters in the U.S. and the critics were divided. Some, like Roger Ebert, hated it, and his sentiment was shared by many older critics. Younger ones generally liked the movie. I wouldn’t dream of chalking it up as merely an age thing. I’m 31 and by no means do I think it’s a budding classic. I spent several days trying to make up my mind as to how many stars the film deserves. I decided to be generous.

This low-budget project is funny and sweet enough to deserve to be recognized, though. Based on a short subject director Jared Hess made the previous year called Peluca, it basically has the same story, but Mr. Hess worked on the script with his wife Jerusha and expanded it into feature-length. The story is set in rural Idaho and is basically a series of episodes strung together. We’re introduced to Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), a geek in the classic sense of the word, with curly blonde hair, big glasses, moonboots, a vacant look on his face, his t-shirt properly tucked into his ill-fitting jeans. Napoleon lives with his grandmother and his equally dorky older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) who spends every day trying to find a woman on the Internet. Napoleon is so downtrodden that he reacts to the simplest question or request as if he’s being asked to do the worst chore he can imagine. When grandma is hurt in a dune buggy accident, uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in to look after the guys, which is ironic since he is in no way wiser than they are (he buys a “time machine” on the Internet and intends to travel to 1982, the best year of his life). As Rico starts a business, Kip actually does find a woman who is interested in him, and Napoleon helps his friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) run for student body president against the most popular girl in school (whose name is Summer, of course). It isn’t much of a story, I know.

Mr. Hess always lets the beloved geeks win. We spend a lot of time throughout the movie laughing at them, but we also start to feel for them and really want them to catch a break, which they do. Napoleon’s moment of triumph is a wonderful sequence where he puts on an act in front of the whole school in favor of Pedro’s candidacy, where he dances to a Jamiroquai tune. Still, some critics thought the film’s set-up felt disingenuous, so I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. The movie is set in contemporary time, but it’s easy to get confused because there are constant influences from the ‘80s in the style of the main protagonists and in the choice of music. That’s part of the charm. Mr. Hess has made the film as simple and straightforward as possible. There isn’t anything flashy about it; gags are set up and executed in an admirably sparse manner, such as the one where Napoleon tries to ride Pedro’s bike over a jump and ends up hurting his groin.

The thing I like best about this unambitious box-office hit is its positive tone. It is somewhat related to contemporary raunchy comedies, but it didn’t need any embarrassingly poor jokes about sex or urine or anything like that to attract audiences. It’s a refreshing change.

The YouTube clip shows the trailer.

Napoleon Dynamite 2004-U.S. 90 min. Color. Produced by Chris Wyatt, Jeremy Coon, Sean Covel. Directed by Jared Hess. Screenplay: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess. Cast: Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Jon Gries (Uncle Rico), Aaron Ruell (Kip Dynamite), Efren Ramirez, Tina Majorino, Diedrich Bader.

Published 2007-05-18 16:24