March
7, 2005
Now
here's my problem. I don't like Napoleon
Dynamite. I don't
think it's a very good movie, nor do I think it's a very effective
teen comedy. This is one of those movies you enjoy if you can
identify with the main characters, but its humor seems to come
from a certain meanness, but without the insights that comedy
requires.
Napoleon
is a nerdish teenager whose personality is a mixture of aloofness
and indifference. In other words, a cranky, unpopular
teenager, an antisocial one at that. He makes no effort
to be liked, and if he enjoys anthing in life, it's revelling
in his unpopularity. I'm
quite worn down by such personality types, because there are
far too many of these souls in Minneapolis. I don't
like that Comic Book Guy arrogance one damned bit; it permeates
this city like a flu virus. Whoever coined the phrase "Minnesota
Nice" was either deluded or a huckster. This
explains, to a great extent, why I'm not enamored of Napoleon
Dynamite. Everyone in this movie just seems to shuffle along
in a half-asleep daze. For some, it may be their idea of acting
cool, but for me it just looks like Ritalin abuse. Jimi Hendrix
was right: there ain't no life nowhere.
This
movie is the creation of Jared and Jershua Hess, a husband-and-wife
writing team who filmed it during their studies at BYU. Their
Mormon background seems to infest the feeling and mood of this
picture; it has something of a Ned Flanders quality to it, a
bland plainness amidst its sincerity.
Everything
just feels detached. Why can't there be any physical contact
between anyone? What are we afraid of? Each character in the
story - Napoleon, brother Kip, Uncle Rico, exchange student Pedro,
arty girl Deb - exists in an impenetrable personal space. The
end result is less a movie about teenagers than a movie about
people who try to look like teenagers. This
kind of ironic detachment is fairly common today, in commercials
and television shows, and in movies like Garden
State. I think
our generation uses irony as a way of avoiding real connections
with one another. I believe it's wrong, and I fear we're missing
out on the marrow of life. That's just the aging hippie in me. There
are some funny moments, and a couple jokes that I enjoyed, but
for the most part, these represented lost opportunities. At one
point, Pedro decides to run for class president, but his unpopularity
makes it a losing cause. But it sets up the funniest gag in the
picture. Napoleon builds recruits by going to harassed nerds
and saying, "Pedro asks for your protection." The next time the
big jock (apparantly there's only one in this school) taunts
the boy, Pedro's bigger cousins drive up in their convertable
with mean eyes. What
a great opportunity - a nerd mafia! I laughed my head off. Then
the whole idea is dropped and never mentioned again. Huh? This
sort of thing happens more than it should. Napoleon
Dynamite almost feels like a pilot episode instead of a movie,
and I actually think it would work as a television show. I
really don't know what else to think. As a story about high school
and teenage years, Todd Solondz's Welcome
to the Dollhouse is
far better, coming from a genuine sense of passion. You could
point to the characters in that film and say, "I know her. That's
me." Napoleon Dynamite is a cartoon, a collection of the mean
and inept and dull. It doesn't even come close. |
