Napoleon Dynamite – Cult classic or Dog shit?

“I caught you a delicious bass” – Napoleon Dynamite

He might have caught us a delicious bass, but he didn’t seem to catch one for me in his movie.

Have you ever come across some sort of direct stupidity that can sometimes, barely be passed off as humor?

The movie Napoleon Dynamite makes all the efforts it can, in order to push this type of studied stupidity to it’s limits.

This movie re-defines the words “Odd” and “Weird”, at least in my dictionary.

This movie was widely released back in August 2004 and went on to gross over 40 million dollars. This posed to be a huge achievement considering the fact that this was a low-budget movie. It was greeted with loads of laughter when it debuted at the Sundance film festival in early 2004.

Storyline:

The Plot of the film, mainly, revolves around five characters namely Napoleon, his friends Debbie and Pedro (Vote for Pedro!! He offers you his protection.), his Uncle Rico and his brother Kip. The Storyline is based in Preston, Idaho.

The stage for what we can expect from the film is set in the opening scene when, On the way to school, Napoleon ties a plastic doll toy with a fishing line and chucks it out of the window of his school bus.

Napoleon is strange teenager (from his hair to his love for tetherball) who is considered to be a geek at his high school and is always picked on. He is the kind of guy who lives in his own imaginary world as he considers his Llama, Tina, to be a liger (mix breed of a lion and a tiger) and likes to play tetherball on his own. Napoleon lives with his grandmother and his old brother Kip who happens to be over 30 years old(..and unemployed!) and is always trying to find love in the midst of thousands of chat rooms on the internet.
After his grandmother is injured in an accident, Napoleon and his brother Kip are left to be taken care off, by their Uncle Rico. Uncle Rico is a old-fashioned door-to-door salesman who thinks that he would’ve gone pro and be a millionaire by now, only if his high school coach would’ve let him play as quarterback.
Soon, Napoleon befriends a new Mexican student, Pedro, who is devoid of any gregariousness and a geeky amateur photographer, Deb.

Napoleon expresses threnody over his inability to attract girls towards him. He thinks that he lacks “skills”. Pedro consoles him by reminding him that he has “sketching skills” and asks him to sketch a portrait of a girl that he wants to ask out to the dance.
Napoleon tries to ask a girl named Trisha out to the dance. Unwillingly, after being forced by her mother who thinks that Napoleon is a retard, Trisha agrees to go. However, the date does not go well and Napoleon ends up dancing with Deb, who happens to be Pedro’s date for the dance.
Meanwhile, Kip and Uncle Rico start a sales business, and are successful to some extent.

Pedro decides to run in the election for school president against Sumer, who is a one of the most popular girls at school. Napoleon agrees to help him using his “legit skills”. They do whatever they can, in order to gain advantage over Sumer. Napoleon sticks out flyers saying “Vote for Pedro” all over the school. Pedro goes around saying that he offers his protection to whosoever votes for him.
However when the time comes for the final speeches, Pedro and Napoleon are taken aback when they find out that along with a speech, each contender is to present some sort of a skit. After his short ( and uninspiring) speech, Pedro loses hope and starts to walk out of the venue until Napoleon comes on to stage and performs a dance.

Shortly after , Pedro is declared as the winner of the elections. Napoleon’s unexpected and surprised talent of dancing results in Pedro’s triumph (we now have his protection!!). He is very content with Napoleon. All is well in the end as Napoleon plays tetherball with Deb and his grandma returns back.

Conclusive Analysis:

Despite the fact that this movie doesn’t have a storyline with a strong base, it was successful to a high extent.

When I first saw this movie about a month ago, the experience deemed to be a somewhat “strange” for me. According to me, this movie tries to expand the humor offered by an otherwise, flat storyline.

Although this movie is classified as a PG Comedy, I think that people can either love this movie or simply hate it. Its more like a one sided affair rather than two. It is very difficult to say that you liked some aspects of this movie and disliked some.

Although some scenes made me laugh, I did not like this movie. To broaden it up, I did not like the way in which producers of this movie tried to expand the dull and flat storyline of this movie and achieve humor out of it.

I think that the biggest problem of this movie is that it sends out an unclear and a mixed message.

The way in which the characters react to everything is just weird. They have slow reaction times, lifeless and painful expressions. All the characters seem to be insulated from reality and their “reality” seems to be inaccessible by us. For instance, Napoleon and Pedro barely seem to register their triumph in the end. That doesn’t make much sense.

People who find this movie to be funny, most likely laughed at the characters rather than with them. This is the main reason why I don’t like such “Comedy” movies. Such people laugh at the characters either because they think that they are superior to them or because they pity or like them. However people who dislike such “comical” instances, are bound to hate this movie and think of it to be nothing more than rotten crap (“rotten crap” is solely used to describe the extent of hatred).

This leads us back to the same question that was raised in my previous post.

Why do we need to laugh at people because we think that we are more superior to them?

What kind of Humor lies in mocking the physical attributes of a person?

What kind of humor does the mocking the way people talk hold?

What meaning does the word “Humor” reflect in today’s society?

On a more broader note, Why do we need to use mockery as a tool of humor?

Whatever happened to the light hearted comedy that everyone could enjoy?

Is this movie destined to be a cult classic? Or, is it one of the biggest pieces of dog crap ever conceived ?

As usual,

The question my friend, is for you to answer.

highAgain~ Out.