Molly Grattan Presents: Bring Me the Head of Scott Baio!

07.19.04
Movie Review: Napoleon Dynamite

If you were ever asked “How was school today?” and had to repress the urge to shout back “The worst day of my life, what do you think!?” then this might be the movie for you.

Not much plot gets developed in Jared and Jershua Hess’s 1980’s high school pastiche, and it still takes on epic proportions. All the major touchstones of teen moviedom are there (The Big Dance, The Class Election), but they mostly just serve as a frame to bounce one liners off of.

Set in rural Idaho, the film follows mouth-breathing, Zubaz-and-moon-boots-wearing uber-nerd Napoleon as he helps is best friend run for class president, deals with his even nerdier older brother Kip, and almost has his life ruined by his shady, Tupperware-dealing Uncle Rico.

The Hesses, like the Coen Brothers, have a great ear for middle-American patterns of speech. The characters speak mostly in outbursts and say things like “you guyses” and “Dealy-o”. I’m not sure if people actually talk like that, but it makes me want to remember that me and my friends talked liked that.

I’m sure there is an uplifting, Nerd-Power message buried in there somewhere, but thankfully it’s not obtrusive. It might be best to think of this movie as what could have been going on just off camera in something like Sixteen Candles or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, following the lives of the characters who are just too creepy for the average teen movie.

Not that a movie about dorks who are happy being dorks is particularly edgy. But imagine how much better Election would have been if it had climaxed in a demonstration of the Electric Boogaloo.