"A MOVIE WITHOUT ANY SKILLS"

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NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
directed by Jared Hess
released: 2004
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I was invited to my Sister's house yesterday to watch NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, a movie that I had heard many good things about. The movie reviewer for our local paper, 'The Arizona Republic' (more appropriately called 'The Daily Disappointment' by the former mayor of Prescott, Sam Steiger), proclaimed it the sleeper of 2004. And that's a label that might apply to many of its potential viewers. As the DVD was inserted into the player, and I settled onto the sofa, my 16-year-old niece, Shannon, who had seen the movie previously, said, "It's a pointless movie; it has no storyline." Oh, the wisdom that sometimes emanates from the mouths of babes!
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I contemplated some of the clever and funny ways I might review NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, but decided to tackle it from an angle I seldom employ:  straight-forward. I suppose it's understandable why some kids (8 to 12 perhaps) might find this movie entertaining, but this review is a public service announcement for everybody else tempted to buy or rent this "sleeper." QUESTION: Is it fair to harshly criticize a simple little comedy? (A poor word to describe this movie, but one must categorize.) ANSWER: Yes, because it asks for $20 of your money and / or 86 minutes of your valuable time!
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NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is a movie without any "skills", but plenty of problems. This is dynamite that only blows up in the viewer's face.
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PROBLEM #1: I understand that the movie was originally a concept for a student film. Well, the writer / director is STILL a student, because he evidently doesn't understand the most rudimentary principles of filmmaking. A movie needs a central conflict that propels the viewer from scene to scene. This is something that most foreign filmmakers have also failed to grasp. They're still trying to put books on film, and they usually bore because novels and movies are two different mediums with unique necessities. It is possible for an episodic film to succeed, but this is exceedingly rare and requires that every scene be poignant and expand the viewer's understanding of the characters. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE simply moves from one supposedly amusing skit to another. The scenes lack dynamism and do not illustrate previously unexplored facets of the characters. And that brings up another problem...
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THE CHARACTERS: The principal character, Napoleon Dynamite, could best be described as a two-toned dog: 'Goofy' with the hairstyle of a poodle! It's fine to have an odd character or two, but you cannot entirely people your story with oddballs. You must have one or two "ordinary" characters to balance the relationships. Here, the only characters who are not overtly strange are simply one-dimensional bullies and snobbish school queens who appear only occasionally to act as a foil for the misfits. Consider the great sit-com, 'THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW': In the early days, Griffith played Andy Taylor as "a heavy-handed rural clown", and it didn't really work; there were too many of that sort in the cast. One day, Griffith said, "I just realized that I'm the straight man. I'm playing straight to all these kooks around me." The next season he downplayed his character, becoming the true heart and soul of the show. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE has no heart and soul; it is just a bunch of kooks in search of a story. And unbelievable kooks at that. The scenes between LaFawnduh and Kip were preposterous in the extreme.
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Sure, there were a few nice moments that elicited a smile or a snicker or two from me. They did manage to convey that sense of insecurity and social ineptitude of young people (especially through the monosyllabic dialogue). Seeing Napoleon step out of his cocoon and daringly help his friend Pedro at the school assembly was the one moment in which we see some sort of genuine growth in a character. The shot of Napoleon practicing his dance moves through his partially closed bedroom door was the one artistic flair that got my attention. Nicely done. And I did appreciate the fact that here was a movie without the customary nudity and over-the-top profanity and violence. But it takes more than that to justify spending an hour and a half of my time in front of the "Lobotomizer."
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It's clear to me that Hollyweird is now officially out of ideas. The Hollyweirdos have been reduced to making movies based on comic books (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, et. al.), TV shows (The Brady Bunch, The Honeymooners, Bewitched), remaking movies that don't need any remaking (Born Yesterday, The Longest Yard, The Bad News Bears), and trying to pass off student movies as genuine films (Napoleon Dynamite). Don't be fooled: NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is nothing more than a low-budget student movie that pretends to make some sort of statement, and imagines itself to be a "film"; it's an invisibly small-scale story that desires to be thought of as something bigger and more important. Kind of like that other Napoleon.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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