Napoleon Dynamite

Directed by Jared Hess

Written by Jared and Jerusha Hess

Starring: Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirez, Diedrich Bader and Tina Majorino

Rated PG for thematic elements and language.

86 minutes runtime

USA Release: June 11, 2004

Denounced as a nerd by the high school powers that be, Napoleon (Jon Heder) sees beyond the confines of the farming community of Prescott, Idaho, to life in the great,,,, well, the great somewhere.  At least somewhere other than what appears to be the cheerleader and jock capitol of America.  But all is not business as usual in Prescott and between feeding the family Llama and coping with a houseful of misfits Napoleon is plotting the political race of a lifetime: the high school election for class president. 

Diversity is a major theme in this film and Napoleon’s family is about as diverse as they come.  After breaking her coccyx in a dune buggy accident, the star’s grandmother is forced to take some time off from her distracted raising of Napoleon and his brother Kip (Aaron Ruell).  Filling in for the eccentric materfamilias is the boy’s uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a young man living in the prime of a fantastical life of a football star that never was.  Napoleon is in high school and wishing he wasn’t, and Rico is out of high school and desperately pretending he is still there, wowing boys and girls alike with his football magic.  Rico is hung up, but Napoleon is moving on and leaving a wake of laughs and shattered small town truisms behind.

A major nod to some very good writing and directing by Jared Hess.  This movie follows up on the theme of his previous nine minute short, “Peluca,” a day with super nerd Seth, also set in Preston.  The short features Seth trying to make sense of a world with a whole different set of values.  A world that has no place for fanny packs, or original thinking, or thinking of any kind, it seems.  A world where high school athletics is as far as 95% of the residents every get towards anybody beyond the city limits knowing their name; where winning the hand of a cheerleader for a date is the only measure of success.

In this teenage milieu there are those who exist and those who don’t.  Those who don’t exist live in Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World” (2000--Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) and travel outside the in-crowd as spirits not yet granted a full existence.  They are as yet unborn, not fully in the world, and as such are barred from many of life’s pleasures, such as making that big touchdown, getting drunk and marrying young.

Napoleon befriends Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a reserved Hispanic lad, new in school, and finds in him a friend with whom he can share the angst of growing up on the outer fringes of acceptance.  Pedro’s first problem is that he needs a date for the upcoming dance and isn’t sure how to get one, which is a realistic problem considering he has all the makings of an even bigger outcast than Napoleon himself.  But the two characters devise a plan to woo the beautiful and popular cheerleader Summer as Pedro’s date for the dance.  Horatio Alger meets Preston, Idaho.

While this plot is cooking, Rico is able to put down his tattered football for long enough to find the job of everyone’s dreams: selling Tupperware door to door.  He expounds the limitless future in peddling kitchenware to Napoleon’s brother Kip, and they are on a role; although Rico seems just as interested in selling himself to amazingly willing housewives as he is in being the Johnny Appleseed of plastic ware. 

In the midst of this stew of hopes and dreams, Deb (Tina Majorino) comes into Napoleon’s life.  Deb, too, has a job selling door-to-door.  She, like Kip, has been duped by someone into selling nearly worthless accessories with the ultimate goal of earning money for college.  Arriving at Napoleon’s door, there is something in his gaze that conveys what she knew already, that she wasn’t cut out for sales and is, in fact, part of his world.  Ghosts don’t sell, and even if they did, she would need to sell a dozen of her wares to every man, woman and dog in Preston to be able to afford bus-fare to Boise, let alone go to college.  This realization comes over her in a scene that brings back our high school anxieties like a sock on the jaw; she breaks down in tears and throws her sales kit onto Napoleon’s doorstep.  Harsh reality invades the ghost world.  Forming a sort of “trying-to-be-in-love triangle,” she, Pedro and Napoleon go the dance and try, unsuccessfully, to determine what they are doing there.

Following rapid-fire on the heals of this simmering pot of teen-age passion, Pedro comes up with the idea of a lifetime.  Actually, it was Jared and Jerusha Hess that came up with the idea of a lifetime for this movie, Pedro will run for class president.   He will run against the beautiful queen of the in crowd, Summer (Haylie Duff), and her political platform of being stylish and pretty and increasing access to junk food.   A formidable foe, and a remarkable juxtaposition of roles--ghost-person runs for real world position as the chief of faux leadership: class president.  Napoleon buys off on the idea, which isn’t all that odd considering his nuclear family now consists of a Tupperware-selling brother, a breast-enhancing potion selling uncle (Rico has a new product line) and a llama.  As Pedro gears up for the race, some hilarious sparks are thrown off as his political program runs as something other than a well-oiled machine.

As Summer appears to have the victory in hand, Napoleon storms onto the scene using the one secret weapon nobody thought of: creative individual thought in the form of a stage performance that has more soul than James Brown.  The race for president is turned on its ear, Rico is kicked out of the house and sent back to his camper to make home movies throwing that touchdown pass of a lifetime, and, yes, Napoleon and Deb see a new side to their relationship that moves beyond both mammary enhancement and multi-level marketing.

Shot in the very realistic settings of the director’s home town of Preston, the camerawork in this movie reflects everything good and bad about the rural Rocky Mountains.  The distant beauty of the mountains rises above the stark survival architecture of the barbed wire fences, ratty lawns and semi-maintained bungalows that make up the average town.  The dusty roads and forlorn mailboxes emphasize the lonely nature of the life.  The conformity brought on ages of inbred isolation.

A flat out excellence performance by Jon Heder, actually a native of Salem, Oregon.  Although Oregon doesn’t have all that much in common with Heder, small towns everywhere share certain common qualities and Heder seems to know instinctively what they are.  Similar excellent performance by the cast of fresh faces that this writer hopes will stick around for future skewerings of certain middle-class values that have long since outlived their usefulness.

If you like movies like this don’t miss “Orange County” with Colin Hanks and Jack Black, another movie about survival in the ghost world, and also “Welcome to the Dollhouse” and “Rushmore.”  And don’t miss Jon Heder and rest of the great cast of “Napoleon Dynamite” if they come to your town.