Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

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I don't think it was as funny as everybody else seems to. Maybe its because I watched it with my parents, instead of surrounded by people like myself who were in high-school in the '80s. I mean, I like the idea of laughing at characters who are too dumb to know they are funny, but I don't know that Napoleon's absurdities are really that funny without a plot at all--heck, and I scored Jackass: The Movie higher than this.

When I was in middle school and high school, we had a guy like this in our class. I forget his name, honestly, so let's call him John. He was rail thin, tall and had straight blonde hair. He would stand up for himself with the bullies who harassed him, but his defenses were utterly ineffectual -- the bullies would taunt him just to get a rise out of him, and then laugh at his reaction. For those of us who tend to feel empathy for the underdog, John would run hot and cold, either assuming we were going to be mean to him, so he would be preemptively defensive, or he would be genuinely nice, but kids fearing that he would turn on them would keep their distance, and those who felt low on the totem pole would be especially wary of him because it could mean harassment by proximity.

I was reminded of him when the study came out a few years ago that showed that people who don't understand much don't understand that they don't understand much. John fell into that category, as does our hero Napoleon.

In our school, as in any, there were two girls who were, um, "developed" beyond their years. One was a brunette, the other a blonde with big, bouncy curly hair. For a talent show, they did a dance, the stage bathed in red light, in skimpy t-shirts and short shorts, gyrating inappropriately to the astonishment of the administration. Later, in high school, the brunette became a cheerleader and gained more respectability, and the blonde dropped out and had a kid before her 18th birthday. But in Middle School they they were both stoner girls. Tough outsiders who gained whatever cred they had by their adolescent slutty persona.

I remember a scene, vaguely, where the two of them were sitting with John on the curb. He was between them, and they were toying with him. I don't think they wanted anything from him but to embarrass him for their amusement, but John didn't care. He was getting attention from these two girls whose attention was a valuable commodity. I don't remember a thing that they said, but I do remember their tone, and I remember his nervous, excited laughter as they pushed his buttons and had him dance on a string. It was the closest he'd come to an affectionate relationship with a girl for some years to come, I would imagine. He didn't know that, though, or care. He was just happy for the attention any way he could get it.

So, maybe Napoleon reminds me of him. Maybe it was the lack of plot, or the fish-in-a-barrell humor. I'd respect a tear-down of harder targets, personally. Or humor brought from situation instead of lack of character.

Maybe I'd feel better about it if Jared Hess appeared to remotely like his character. As it is, I feel ambivalent about Napoleon. At times I like him, at times I hate him, but I never feel good about either of those. I guess comedy can exist in that precipice, but that's exactly how I felt about John which was never very funny, whether he was getting pushed up against the locker by asshole guys, or dancing like toy poodle for the stoner sluts. Any way I felt about him felt like the wrong way to feel about him.

Then again, I always wanted to tie a string on one of my matchbox cars and dangle it from a moving car when I was a kid, but I never was brave enough.