REVIEW : "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004) - Movie by Jared Hess

The early part of the new century of cinema (wow that sounds serious), gifted us with a slightly new trend of movies. This is what I call the Wes Anderson style, that has strains as far back as the Expressionist Weimar movement and could be seen as reinvetion of it, since it tends to be both highly stylized and often deals with existential themes that can be hard to portray otherwise.

I will admit though that the style has never been one of my favorites, since it seems to me a bit too easy to cover up difficult cinematography, which the expressionists solved brilliantly, with pretentious style, that is nothing more than just that, style to cover up a lack of original ideas.

Napoleon Dynamite is one such movie and it sits smack in the middle of this new trend ... but it has a hard time delivering what it kind of sets out to deliver.

This nerd of nerds called Napoleon Dynamite, lives in a remote smalltown in Idaho, where the quirky personalities is the rule rather than the exception. He has no sense of the world or any kind of individual self, or at least not as we get to know him in the first half. His brother is almost if not more quirky than him and his grandmother, with whom they live, is almost completely out of the picture.

His uncle Rico, who has weird ideas of timemachines and sells tupperware to the local pathetic population, is the overblown selfcentered wannabe "manly" man who is actually unsuccesful in everything he does. He is pathetic but not nerdy.

In school Napoleon is treated like a piece of shit by the psycho´s and completely ignored by the hot girls (and the not so hot´s). His only access to social life is through the extremely introvert Deb and the equally mindnumbed mexican, Pedro.

The movie spends the first two acts setting up all these and more characters and the quirkyness of the smalltown mentality and the corruption of the school environment. The idea is fine as such, I am sympathetical to it, but when it all comes down, it does feel rather prejudiced and formulaic.

Heder does portray Napoleon very convincingly and to be honest his character is the only one that has any really interest, seen from an acting point of view. Yes the other ones are weird and quirky and funny at times, but it quickly becomes strenuous and pretentious. The cutting between the scenes don´t always work for me either, as I am more than a few times, drawn out of the movie, from this.

The sidestories, like that of the online "babe" adventure of his brother, is not really bringing the story forward, even if their tete a tete on a bench, is quite ridiculously funny in an overblown fashion. Too much of the movie goes with establishing the characteres and sidestories that dilutes the already weak plot line. It seems to me the director and scriptwriter wanted primarily to make a "Wes Anderson" movie and then tried to stick something at the end, that does its best to give the characters an arc and just some kind of plausible closure.

At the point when you finally feel some sort of interest for the situation and the characters, the story is about to end, making me think it is unbalanced and cut of short either due to the ending just being a necessary part fitted on out of necessity or that they simply did not really care for telling a story, but rather just throw weird characters and behavior at you. This could have been so much better, if the development of the characters had been cared for and the overall structure had been better balanced.

The cinematography is at times very good, if just a bit simplistic and stylized maybe to cover up a fear of going all in. But it does work well most of the time. The main character is by far the best actor and the rest are just mediocre to actually quite weak. It is one of those kinds of movies I want to like, but have a hard time convincing myself that I do. it may enter my dvd player once more in the future but it is not a given.

5/10