posted
I don't know if you all have already discussed this movie, but I just saw this movie again, and thought it was even funnier the second time.
Most people I've talked to who have seen Napolean Dynamite hated it. The consensus amongst these people seem to be that the movie lacked depth, understanding, truth, and whatever crap people can muster to make themselves sound like hoity toity film students who really just like to sit around and smoke cigars while mentally jacking each other off. Anyway, while I don't think the movie is brilliant....wait, yeah I kinda do. The thing is, you can't look to this film for deep meaning and anyone who attempts to do so is a tool. The sole purpose of this movie is to make you laugh at off-beat characters that are somewhat relatable to the kids you went to school with.
The character Napoleon Dynamite is a coke-bottle glass wearing, carrot-top look-alike resident of Idaho. He is odd and akward and would never survive high school if he were a real life person. His family consists of a chat addict named Kip, Grandma, and Uncle Rico. Like Napoleans outfits, the house is stylisitcally overrun by the tackiness of the 70's/80's. The basic premise is Napoleon and his friend Pedro run for class president against popular girl Summer while his brother and uncle sell worthless products door-to-door. Meanwhile Napolean is falling in love with an also offbeat peer, Deb. That's what you get. That's it.
The movie defenitly lacked coherency, but that is how life is. A string of meaningless random events that are quite memorable even with the absence of a climax. Life is filled with physical comedy and stupid one-liners that often turn into inside jokes.
There is no gratuitous fighting, sweaty lesbian sex scenes, and vulgarity in this movie which suprisingly didn't take away from how much I enjoyed it. The film has a shortage of cliches and pretentious condescension that you see in so many family films today. In the same way people walked away from the theaters unimpressed with movies such as Zoolander and Office space, people (the ones with humor) will eventually find high comedic relief in ND which will lead it to be a staple in peoples (the ones with humor) movie collections.
Go watch this movie. Now.
Posts: 1015 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I found it to be mildly amusing until the dance scene. Then it was the best movie ever made for four minutes.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
I didn't hate it. In fact, I think that if it had been a short film--say, maybe 15-30 minutes--I might have really loved it. I just think that a feature-length movie needs more than quirky characters to make it funny or interesting.
I will agree, though, that the dancing scene was awesome.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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