Movie Rewind: Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

Director: Jared Hess (Nacho Libre)

Cast: John Heder (Blades of Glory, The Benchwarmers), Efren Ramirez (Crank, Employee of the Month), Jon Gries (The Pretender, Lost), Aaron Ruell, Tina Majorino (Veronica Mars, Big Love), Diedrich Bader (The Drew Carey Show)

The Deal: Napoleon Dynamite (Heder) is quite unpopular in high school, having interests that could be found strange by strange people. He lives with his Grandma and 32-year-old brother Kip (Ruell), and his Uncle Rico (Gries) pops in from time to time to watch over them. Napoleon makes a new friend in Pedro (Ramirez), and helps him run for Class President. Along the way, Napoleon meets Deb (Majorino), and he begins to fancy her, but his strange habits make things slightly difficult.

Thoughts: On my first viewing, I thought the film was fairly funny. There are plenty of great one-liners, and Napoleon was just so strange that I found it hysterical. It became a cult classic, and people were quoting it left and right, and it's at this point where I wondered why I thought it was funny. After seeing it a few more times, I realized the humor was long gone, and all that remained was the mediocre story. This is the problem with Napoleon Dynamite, it does not have lasting appeal as all good comedies should.

The characters in the film were all so outrageous that even a bad performance could go unnoticed. Napoleon is socially awkward, and his brother Kip is too, though Kip does cruise internet chat rooms for ladies. Uncle Rico can't shake the thought that had the coach played played him in the championship, his high school football team would have won ("How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Yeah, Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would've been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.") Deb is quite socially awkward herself. The cast all pull off their characters decently, but their performances are far from good.

This really is a film with one memorable scene and a handful of one-liners. The dance sequence towards the end was hilarious and easily the best scene of the film. The exchange between Napoleon and Pedro about girls only liking guys with skills was funny since their list of skills were very unordinary (nunchaku, bow hunting, computer hacking). Kip's internet girlfriend visiting was fairly funny as it plays out exactly how you'd expect it to play out (i.e., the girl is not exactly how she describes herself).

Verdict: Good for a few laughs the first time around, but the humor fades with additional viewings, and the story becomes increasingly dull. Don't fall for all of the hype. ☆☆1/2