Originally released June 11, 2004:

Napoleon Dynamite was an audience smash at the 2004 Sundance film festival. Fox Searchlight jumped at the chance to distribute a film written and directed by Mormons, starring a Mormon, and set in film-friendly Idaho. MTV Films, the people behind alternating good movies (Better Luck Tomorrow, Election) and atrocious movies (Crossroads, Joe’’s Apartment, an upcoming film actually based on Avril Lavigne’’s ““Sk8r Boi”” song), came aboard and basically said, “Look, we really like the movie, and we want to help bring it to a wider, MTV-influenced audience.” And thus, Napoleon Dynamite seems to have become the summer biggest must-see film for sk8r bois and sk8r grrrls nationwide.

Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder) is an Idaho teen that marches to the beat of his own drum. He lives with his Dune Buggy riding grandmother and 31-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), who surfs the Web talking to women. When their grandma gets injured, Uncle Rico (John Gries), stuck in the 80s in fashion and mind, takes up shop in the Dynamite home and coerces Kip to hustle money from neighbors. Meanwhile, Napoleon befriends Deb (Tina Majorino), an otherwise normal girl with a sideways ponytail, and Pedro (Efren Ramirez, who was actually in Kazaam!), the new kid at school. Together, they try and get Pedro elected to class president, but standing in their way is the mighty shadow of Summer (Haylie Duff), the most popular girl in school. Oh yeah, there’’s also a llama.

First time director, Jared Hess, and first time cinematographer, Munn Powell, orchestrate shots very statically, with little, simple camera movements and many centered angles. The style is reminiscent of the films of Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse), or, more precisely, Wes Anderson. This shooting technique makes the characters stand out even more, almost popping out at you behind flat backgrounds like some Magic Eye picture. Hess easily communicates the tedium of Idaho with his direction. Can anyone name any other film that takes place entirely in Idaho? (Please note that My Own Private Idaho takes place in Portland and Seattle, mostly).

The star of the show is, of course, Heder. His wickedly funny deadpan delivery helps to create a truly memorable character. He achieves a geek Zen and, judging from the incredible amount of kids under-14 that appeared both times I saw this film, is most likely the greatest film realization of a dork. It’s grand dork cinema, a genre long ignored after the collapse of the mighty Revenge of the Nerds franchise. So while Napoleon isn’’t exactly relatable (llamas, Dune Buggy grannies and all), the right audience will see reflections of themselves. You’’ll be quoting from Napoleon all summer.

Napoleon Dynamite is going to be an acquired taste. It’s filled to the brim with stone-faced absurdities and doesn’’t let up. If you’’re not pulled in with the bizarre antics of bizarre characters in the first 10 minutes, then you may as well leave because otherwise it will feel like the film is wearing you down with its “indie weirdness.” Napoleon Dynamite seems to skirt the sublimely skewed world of Wes Anderson, but Napoleon lacks the deep humanity of Anderson’s films. What the audience is left with is a sugary, sticky icing but little substance beneath, and, depending on your sweet tooth, it’’ll either be overpowering and a colossal disappointment or it’’ll taste just right for the occasion. Alright, I’’m done with baking analogies for the year.

Some will find a certain condescension against the characters. Napoleon Dynamite doesn’’t outright look down upon its characters, but it does give them enough room to paint themselves fools. Uncle Rico is really the film’s antagonist, yet he’s too buffoonish to be threatening. It’’s a fine line for a film to have condescension toward its characters, but Napoleon Dynamite ultimately leaves with a bemused appreciation for its characters. The film presents the “good” characters as unusual but lovable and ready for growth (Kip, Pedro, and of course Napoleon), but the “bad” characters (Summer, Uncle Rico) aren’’t demonized. In essence, Napoleon Dynamite is the best example of a film that makes an audience laugh at and with its characters simultaneously.

Napoleon Dynamite is assuredly an odd duck. Some will cheer; others will want to head out the door after a few minutes. It’’s hard to say which reaction an individual will have. If you have a geek-enriched history populated with unicorns, Dungeons and Dragons, and/or social ostracism, then you may be more inclined to admire Napoleon Dynamite. I laughed out loud throughout the film and found it to be an enjoyable diversion, and I went the whole review without one Jimmy Walker reference.

Nate’s Grade: B

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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER

I feel like trying to explain the unexpected pop-culture success of Napoleon Dynamite is a fool’s errand, ultimately leaving one sputtering out and ending with the disappointing culmination, “Well, you just had to be there, I guess.” It was 2004, before the rise of YouTube and dominant social media outlets, and for whatever reason, if you were under 30, you probably fell in love with this Idaho nerd, or at least fell in love sounding like this Idaho nerd. I couldn’t travel more than a few blocks without overhearing some loitering Millennial uttering, “Gawsh” in mock exasperation, or mentioning llamas, tater tots, ligers, or catching a significant other a “delicious bass.” If you can recall how annoying and omnipresent the Borat impressions were after that 2006 movie’s mainstream splash, well the silver lining to every person, usually a smirking male member of the species, saying, “My wiiiiiiife,” was that it finally pushed aside everyone else endlessly imitating Napoleon Dynamite (John Heder). This movie was everywhere in 2004. It was meme-ified before meme culture became prevalent. Re-watching this movie twenty years later is like excavating a novelty from a different time and trying to better analyze why this silly and stupid little movie about weirdos living their weird lives became a zeitgeist breakout.

If I had to explain the appeal of Napoleon Dynamite, I think it serves as the next step in the evolution of comedy for younger adults. The Muppets are a deservedly celebrated comedy troupe for over 50 years, and beyond the iconic characters and their mirthful camaraderie, I think their ongoing appeal is that it’s an introduction to the forms of irony for younger children. It’s teaching that there can be more behind the silly, and Napoleon Dynamite takes that PG-comedy baton and pushes it forward, as its entire being is one of ironic comedy. The entire movie is built upon the viewer finding the behavior and banter of these characters hilarious for being so straight. There aren’t really jokes in the traditional sense of setups and payoffs; every line has the potential to be a joke because it’s a character saying something ridiculous without the awareness of being ridiculous. As I said back in 2004, “If you’’re not pulled in with the bizarre antics of bizarre characters in the first 10 minutes, then you may as well leave because otherwise it will feel like the film is wearing you down with its “indie weirdness.” Perhaps this style of comedy, a feature fully dedicated to ironic detachment, served as an awakening for others in my age-range, who championed the absurdity of the everyday and lionized the liger-loving man. This movie doesn’t achieve the larger artistic ambitions in a heightened tone of a Wes Anderson or a Yorgos Lanthimos, two masters of droll deadpans. It’s not deep. It’s not complicated. It’s always obvious, but that made the comedy all the more accessible to so many, especially for younger teens and kids.

As a movie, Napoleon Dynamite can be overwhelming. Seeing any clip of this movie serves the same comedy function as watching the entire 96-minute experience. It helps to structure the movie around a nerd’s quest to win over the girl and help his fellow outcasts. It has a recognizable us-versus-them formula where we can root for the weirdos to, if not prove their naysayers wrong, at least prove to one another that they have found acceptance from the ones who matter. It works on that familiar territory. Napoleon’s big dance at the talent show is his triumph, showcasing to the rest of the school his skills, though he runs away before the adulation can be felt, robbing his character of the perceived victory but giving it to the audience instead.

For most of the people involved in this movie, they had a brief burst of wider success before gradually coming back down to Earth. Heder was the obvious breakout and was given bigger supporting roles in studio comedies like Just Like Heaven, School for Scoundrels, Blades of Glory, and Surf’s Up, the other animated penguin movie from 2006. Heder has worked almost exclusively in the realm of voice acting in the last decade, including 2024’s Thelma the Unicorn, directed by Jared Hess and co-written by Jared and his wife Jerusha, the same creative team that gave us Napoleon Dynamite. I never really vibed with any other Hess comedy. I didn’t get the love for 2006’s Nacho Libre, and from there the movies just got worse to unwatchable, like Gentlemen Broncos and Don Verdean, each trying to chase that same combination of detached irony and quirk that proved so successful for them in 2004. I think the inability to follow-up Napoleon Dynamite with another breakout comedy of its ilk speaks to the unpredictable nature of assembling the right mixture of actors, tone, and material, as well as good timing. Would Napoleon Dynamite have been as big a success in 2009 as opposed to 2004? Maybe not. There was a six-episode animated TV series version in 2012, and the fact that I never remembered this probably answers the question over whether the filmmakers got lucky in 2004.

Napoleon Dynamite is the exact same movie it was back in 2004 as it now resides in 2024, and forever more. It’s flat, detached, silly, light-hearted and the same joke on repeat, and if you feel yourself gravitating toward that comedy wavelength, then hop on and enjoy. Re-watching it for me was like revisiting a fad from the past that was hard to put into context. What was it that made so many buy “Vote for Pedro” T-shirts and talk about throwing footballs over mountains? Comedies more than any other movie lend themselves to audience dissemination, to take the jokes and moments and characters and run with them. Nearly every successful comedy has experienced some form of this, so why should Napoleon Dynamite be any different? It’s perfectly understandable to watch this movie unfazed, unamused, and questioning what exactly people found so amusing about this guy and his extended family and friends back in 2004. It’s also understandable to smile and chuckle at the absurdities played so matter-of-factly. Gawsh.

Re-View Grade: B-