Napoleon Dynamite (DVD)
Starring: Jon Heder, Jon Gries
Written and Directed by: Jared Hess

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Rating: 4 (out of 5)

By now, everyone who reads this column on a more-or-less regular basis knows that I was, in my younger years, a nerd. That's not to say that I'm not a nerd NOW, but when I was a kid, it was far less acceptable and far more likely to get me beaten up and mocked relentlessly. To this day, wearing a thong is second nature to me, after having so many atomic wedgies administered to me.

How's THAT for a mental image?

What made it worse for me was that some brainiac in my school system decided I was GIFTED. This seemed like a great idea, in theory. After all, I was being beaten up for being smart…so let's move me to a school with other SMART kids! How could it FAIL?

Then again, none of you have ever had someone who was doing University-level calculus at the age of 11 for FUN wedgie you, have ya? I was the nerd among the nerds. The very fact that I ever even HAD sex (with a partner) probably lost a lot of people a lot of bets.

Despite their best efforts, Idaho won't be hosting this year's X-Games.

I think that this is a big reason why I enjoyed "Napoleon Dynamite" so much. I like to see the nerd triumph…although in this movie, "triumph" is sort of a relative term. Plus, Napoleon (Heder) is an even bigger nerd than I ever was…even in the days when I carried Dungeons & Dragons dice around with me. He's not FAR off the mark, but enough to make me feel marginally better…until I realize that he's a fictional character. Then I get depressed and reach for the vodka again.

The movie opens with our hero, waiting for his school bus, in Small-Town, Idaho. He wears an odd-looking T-Shirt that went out of fashion circa 1983 (back when I would have been wearing it), sports a really awkward-looking perm, and of course, his moon-boots (which I actually owned). Once the bus arrives, he sits in the back, where a much younger kid asks him "What are you going to do today, Napoleon?"

"Whatever I FEEL like! GOSH!"

He then proceeds to take an action figure wrapped in fishing line out, drops it out of the window and lets it drag on the road behind him as he holds on to the other end of the line. This, my friends, is bizarre behaviour, even in the least well-adjusted kids you've ever seen. No explanation is given for it, either. He just does it, seemingly because it's what he FEELS like. I never did anything THAT strange.

Okay, that's a lie. I did. But I'm not telling you what it was.

"I hope riding with the top down doesn't mess up my hair."

I don't want to make any judgments about people in Small-Town Idaho, but I'm willing to guess that it isn't the "coolest" community in America. And yet, Napoleon still doesn't fit in at all. Part of it is his penchant for doing just really strange things, like carrying Tater-Tots around in his pocket. And obviously, part of it is his love of really odd activities, like drawings of dark-age warriors, or the "happy hands" sign-language club. Although, to be fair, at that age I was in a "happy hands" club of my own. I was the only member of it, and instead of sign language, the activity was manic, chronic masturbation. I'm proud to say that years later, the club is still going strong. Or at least I WOULD be proud to admit it if that didn't involve confessing the fact that I masturbate a lot. Note to self…edit this part out later. [Not a chance, loser! -ed]

Napoleon also has a habit of being over-dramatic and freaking out for no real reason. Again, this is something that I did a lot of. And, if you ask my old boss, he'll tell you that I never quite broke that habit. He also makes stories up pretty much at will, with no real clue about how dorky it makes him look. Whether he's shooting wolverines, using his nunchucks, or rebuffing gang recruiters who want him for his bow staff skills, he's making a total ass out of himself without even knowing it. And yet we still love him for it.

Pedro almost won, too, but he wound up losing Ohio.

And strangely enough, he's not even the biggest dork in the town. His older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) is a smaller, dorkier nerd who stays home all day chatting online with "babes" and "training to be a cage fighter". He's also incredibly effeminate. If anyone remembers the "Lyle, The Effeminate Heterosexual" sketches from Saturday Night Live…well, Kip is worse.

They live with their Grandmother, who winds up breaking her coccyx on a "date" that involves sand dunes and dune buggies. So, their Uncle Rico (Gries) is brought in to look after them. As dorky as the Dynamite brothers are, they pale in comparison to Rico. He's a middle-aged guy who lives in a van and makes videos of himself throwing footballs to nobody in particular. At this point, you start to wonder if the Dynamite gene pool isn't short a chromosome or 50. The mutated offspring of Urkel and a They Might Be Giants groupie would be savvier.

"Stargate SG-1 is better!" "No way! Enterprise is better!" "Nuh-uh!" "Uh-huh!" "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!" "Wanna go?" "Do YOU wanna go?"

Meanwhile, things look up for Napoleon. He actually finds a friend in recent immigrant Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and seems to, inexplicably, catch the eye of the school's resident girl-nerd Deb (Tina Majorino, who's just too damn cute to buy as a nerd, even if she has a bad hairdo).

The only real plot points are these…Rico hates Napoleon, even though Rico is more pathetic. Kip is in love with a girl he met online named Lafawnduh, even though they've never met. And Napoleon takes it upon himself to help Pedro get elected class president, even though his competitor is the most popular and pretty girl in school, Summer Wheatly (Haylie Duff).

An aside: Haylie, of course, is the younger and less busty sister of movie and pop star Hilary Duff. This works out really well. That's because the character of Summer is so vapid, obnoxious, and easy to hate, that she could only be played by someone named Duff. As a result, I now hate every actor with Duff in his or her name. But, if I have to put it on a scale, I hate Haylie slightly less than Hilary, but slightly more than "Dallas" star Patrick Duffy. And I'd be officially boycotting Duff beer, if it existed. I've also thrown out my duffel bag as well, so you know I'm serious. In closing, enuff Duff. Thank you.

That's Duff on the right. Don't you just want to SMACK her?

The strange thing about "Napoleon Dynamite" is that it isn't really a traditional movie. It's more like a series of scenes, with the same characters. There's not much of a plot, other than what I recapped. A more appropriate title may have been "Scenes From The Life Of Napoleon Dynamite".

However, the admittedly thin plot threads manage to intermingle, and it works…all because of the characters. As geeky as he is, it's impossible NOT to like Napoleon. Sure, he yells a lot when he shouldn't, and makes up unbelievable stories, and does the most awkward, nerdy things that you could possibly imagine. But he's FUN. He's the kind of kid that would drive you crazy if you knew him in real life…but as a fictional character, he's actually very endearing, and by the end of it, even the biggest cynic wants something to go right for this poor kid. I mean, after all, with this family behind him, it's a wonder he turned out as "normal" as he did.

That's right ladies...YOU could marry into THIS family! Line forms on the right.

Heder is absolutely fantastic in this role. He plays Napoleon with an open-mouthed, heavy-lidded, stiff-limbed, deadpan delivery that is absolutely perfect. He IS the physical embodiment of the nerd, and his dead-on physical performance carries the entire film from start to finish.

The many of the other performances are equally impressive. Gries, as it turns out, has had a long career as a character actor. I guarantee you've seen him before, but probably won't recognize him. Fans of nerd comedy will know him best as Lazlo in the 1985 Val Kilmer geek-opus "Real Genius", which also marks the last time that Val Kilmer was tolerable.

The writing is really sharp, even if there's not a strong "plot" in sight. Mostly, it's because it's just plain funny. And they manage to make it funny and interesting without having a single naughty word in the entire movie. Don't get me wrong…I think vulgarity is funny…INCREDIBLY fucking funny. But this movie manages to be hilarious without ever resorting to potty-mouth, which is actually nice to see. This element of it can be attributed to the fact that Hess and Heder are both Mormons. Unfortunately, this also leads to the very wrong assumption that this is a "Mormon" movie. It isn't. It's just a very funny, sweet, and family-friendly flick that just HAPPENS to be made by Mormons. Don't let religion sway you one way or the other.

"Hey! You two! Move it apart! This isn't an orgy!".

There is one frustrating part of the movie, but it's designed to be frustrating. Deb OBVIOUSLY likes Napoleon a lot, yet he's just too gosh-darn dim to see it. There are parts of this film where I just wanted to grab Napoleon by his bad perm and smack him, screaming, "She LIKES you! A LOT! Stop being a tool and just GO with it!" For me, the fact that I wanted to do it says a lot about how effective the movie was.

There are two other things I loved. Number one, you'll be quoting this movie for months, if not years. It's got a quotability rating on par with a Monty Python movie. Number two is that it has the single-greatest dance scene since John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

"Well you can tell by the way that I use my friggin' sweet walk that I'm a wanted man...no time to talk, okay? GOSH!"

They did a nice job with the DVD, too. First of all, when you watch the movie itself, go right through the credits. There's a new scene that was added by Hess after the movie became a hit. (And even if you didn't like it, it WAS a hit. It cost $400,000 to make and grossed over $44 million at the box office, before DVD. That's a HIT.) This added scene is good and funny, but not necessary. For DVD purposes, it probably should have been in the "features" section rather than tacked on after the credits where people might miss it.

It also includes the original short film "Peluca" that inspired the feature. It's interesting, but watch the feature instead. There are some "extended" scenes, but to be honest, they were good cuts and were made for a reason.

Overall, it's a love-it-or-hate-it movie that I loved. If you tend to agree with me, you'll probably love it. If not, well, I wonder why you read me in the first place. Probably for the profanity and the dirty jokes.

Now, if you'll excuse me, this thong is riding up on me like you wouldn't believe…

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