Napoleon Dynamite

I didn't really want to see Napoleon Dynamite, but had that sick curiosity reserved for rubbernecking on the freeway and reality television. Then a friend let us borrow the DVD.

Napoleon Dynamite is about, well, Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), a tall, frizzy-haired, spectacled geek of enormous proportions. Napoleon is a new breed of nerd: The Angry Nerd. Because he's not short, Napoleon is a little too powerful to routinely pick on. Instead, he's randomly slammed into lockers or mocked in gym. But Napoleon never curls up into a ball and weeps. He tells people "SHUT UP! GOSH!" or "Freakin idiot!" through half-closed lids. Everyone knows the Angry Nerd...he's voted Most Likely to Be a Serial Killer by his graduating class.

To be fair, Napoleon never had a chance. We're never told where his parents are, but he lives with his ATV-riding grandmother (Sandy Martin) and his painfully awkward older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). Kip has a long distance relationship over the Internet with a woman known only as LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery). Adding insult to injury, they own a pet llama named Tina and Napoleon has to take the bus to school with elementary kids.

And oh yeah, his first name is Napoleon and his last name is Dynamite.

Napoleon is also a gamer. I submit the following evidence:

Napoleon draws a manticore that he refers to as a liger. "It's pretty much my favorite animal," says Napoleon. "It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic." When faced with a job putting chickens in cages, he asks, "Do the chickens have large talons?"

Yep, that's a guy who plays Dungeons & Dragons all right.

Or he would, if he had any friends. Napoleon eventually makes one friend, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), who is also ostracized at school because he's from Mexico. The so-white-its-bright faculty and students constantly look down Pedro upon. But Pedro is confident in his own subtle way. He asks girls out by baking them cakes and most importantly, he plans to run for school president.

Napoleon is not so lucky. He openly admits he has no skills (if this were a more up-to-date movie, Napoleon would say he has no "Mad Skillz"). Well, he has the ability to draw. Unfortunately, he only THINKS he can draw. His drawing sucks too.

So Napoleon lies. He lies about hunting wolverines, about his amazing martial arts prowess, about his non-existent girlfriend, about pretty much everything. Since everything Napoleon says is utterly deadpan, there's no easy way to tell if he's lying.

When Napoleon's grandmother has an ATV accident, his Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) comes to live with them. There's a subtle irony here: Rico is a failed football star that is perpetually stuck in the 80s. He is the ghost of the future, a vicious attack on all those high school jocks who would have gone pro if they hadn't messed up that knee. Rico's entire life is driven by one goal: to travel backwards in time. Once he discovers an expensive time travel kit on the Internet that will transport him backwards, he enlists Kip to join his get-rich-quick schemes. First it's Tupperware, then it's...breast enhancement products.

Yeah, Napoleon never had a chance.

In the middle of this insanity, Napoleon bumps into Deb (Tina Majorino), dressed in full 80s attire and trying to sell her friendship bracelets so someone (her? Her mom?) can go to college. It doesn't go well at first, but it's clear the two are destined for each other.

Eventually, Kip meets LaFawnduh, a luscious African-American woman from Detroit. Her arrival transforms Kip and the entire movie from then on, signaling a change from the 80s death by stagnation to an updated, hipper universe. No literal time travel happens, but suddenly the movie shifts gears and its 2004 again. And finally, all the characters begin some real emotional growth.

Much of the movie's humor centers on the sympathy or disdain we have for characters like Napoleon. A lot of the jokes are around mid-Western foils: the white town's reaction to an ethnic student, heavy usage of the word "sweet," and farmers shooting cows (in front of a busload of schoolchildren no less). Not everyone will get the jokes.

Perhaps more intriguing is the parallels between this film and Donnie Darko. Both films have superhero-esque names, both take place in primarily white high schools, both feature racism against a different ethnicity, both have adults teaching kids confidence building skills, both have a serious 80s fetish, and finally both feature an obsession with time travel. It's likely more people haven't made the connection between the two movies because few audiences have watched both.

Unlike Donnie Darko, the broad parodies of white Midwesterners are smeared with racist undertones. The two ethnic characters play to the most awful racial stereotypes: Pedro has a big family, scary relatives in pimped up cars, and is Catholic while LaFawnduh has long painted nails, lots of gold jewelry, and comes from Detroit.

Throughout the film, the director (Jared Hess), makes liberal use of the buzzing sound of a fly. It's a reminder that whenever we're laughing at Napoleon, we're the big jerks. Which really argues the point that perhaps this movie isn't supposed to be a comedy after all.

Ultimately, Napoleon Dynamite posits the question: what good ARE people like Napoleon? He's angry, rude, insensitive, socially inept, and seems to be in a perpetual daze most of the time. What ARE Napoleon's skills?

We get the answer in a climactic frenzy of events that culminate in the class election. Pedro promises in his speech that he will make "all your dreams come true," and in a sense, the film's conclusion is precisely that.

Sweet!