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| 9/23/2004 |
| Napoleon Dynamite: The Coolest Loser Ever |
A Movie Review
by Wes Bennett
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“Napoleon Dynamite” was a movie that everyone kept telling me to go see. People seem to love the film and want to know what I think of it.
I kept putting it off, but gradually the film started gaining momentum, grossing over 32 million dollars since its release in January.
I personally liked the film, but it’s not the type of movie that I would expect mainstream audiences to enjoy. It’s a very subtle, bizarre film. But it’s also very unique and memorable. I remember thinking the same thing about Wes Anderson’s “Bottle Rocket.” I enjoyed it, but I didn’t know why it was as popular as it was.
The film sketches out the dire adolescent life of the title character (Jon Heder), a gangly youth from Idaho whose nerdiness has achieved epic proportions.
Napoleon lives on a rural farmhouse with his dirt-biking grandma (Sandy Martin), her pet llama Tina, and his 32-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who is conducting an Internet romance with a faraway black woman named LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery), who may or not be a man in drag.
In addition to Napoleon and Kip, other odd characters include their Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a macho bully and failed football player who hawks breast-enlargement products door to door and Deb (Tina Majorino), Napoleon's possible love interest who works part time as a portrait photographer.
Napoleon predictably doesn't get any more respect at high school, when he befriends a dim Mexican named Pedro (Efren Ramirez), and helps him run for class president against Summer, a popular blonde played by Haylie Duff (Hilary's 19 year old sister). But Napoleon is too eccentric to be a beaten down by the constraints of mainstream society.
In showing us the world of such a unique character, there are some very memorable parts including: Napoleon playing solo tetherball, Napoleon handling an unruly chicken, performing a sign-language translation of Bette Midler's “The Rose,“ sucker-punching his even more dorky brother, putting tater tots in his pocket for later or getting shoved into a locker.
A laugh out loud moment for me occurred when Uncle Rico threw a steak that hit Napoleon in the face to prove his football prowess.
While this is all great stuff, this is a much different kind of humor than the well thought out hilarity of “Anchorman” or “Starsky and Hutch.”
For instance in an opening scene where Napoleon rides the bus with much younger kids, he begins the day by dragging an action figure tied to a long line of fishing wire out the back.
While this succeeds in being memorable and bizarre, it’s not that funny, its odd, kind of amusing, but not a well developed joke like- the Will Ferrell erection scene in “Ron Burgandy.” A lot of the time, I was really not sure how to react.
Others would argue that one of the reasons why “Napoleon Dynamite” works, is because of this unusual tone that the audience is sometimes unsure how to react to. Hess and his actors underplay everything. This comedy is appealing because they aren't working the material for laughs like on dumb, obvious sitcoms starring James Belushi or David Spade.
As we're laughing at these characters and thinking how weird and pathetic they might be, we're warming up to them. This is partly because there really are no “normal” people in the film. The cool kids seem to be even more unappealing than the dorks.
And in the end, the film’s limitations are forgiven, when Napoleon busts out some impressive dance moves to help out Pedro in the movie’s climax. I can’t explain why, but it felt oddly triumphant.
I also have to give credit to the look of the film that manages to make everything look kind of awkward and ugly, the way pictures do in a 70’s era high-school yearbook. Napoleon's three-piece, thrift-store suit was not really ever fashionable, but kind of looks like something an ambitious hipster might wear today.
Sure the film could have been a bit more focused, but a movie that captures a character as original and bizarre as Napoleon Dynamite is sure to captivate people at the very least in it’s originality and spirit.
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wes says: |
add on |
10/12/2004 7:12:06 PM |
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arnoldco says: |
question |
9/23/2004 9:27:22 PM |
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| "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it." |
- Jack Nicholson
A Few Good Men
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Distributed Beers
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| 5 |
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot |
| 4 |
Guinness Draught |
| 3 |
Newcastle Brown Ale |
| 2 |
Bass Pale Ale |
| 1 |
Samuel Adams Boston Lager |
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