People go to the movies for an emotion, an experience, and a story. Rarely are there movies that ignore all 3 of these and still become an iconic film. Well, Napolean Dynamite did just that. To an extreme extent as well. Most people who love this movie, love it for its dry humor, simple story, and iconic characters. Many people have tried to recreate this type of comedy but can’t. Why?
The impact of Napoleon Dynamite goes deeper than its humor. Napoleon Dynamite is a symbol. A symbol of honesty and sympathy. His lines are hilarious to us because his lines are things that we would love to say but can’t because it can hurt people’s feelings. His lines are short, simple, and not staged like a regular “joke”. There is no punchline, no laugh track, and no hilarious slapstick comedy. It is not hard to find examples of this just by skimming through the movie.
“I see your drinking 1%, is that cause you think your fat?”
“Are you gonna eat your tots?”
“Tina you fat lard come get some dinner!”
“You got like 3 feet of air that time, can I try really quick?”
“Basically the worst day of my life what do you think!”
The list goes on and on. These are things that are in our heads, but we are too afraid to say out loud. The setup of the lines also brings the subject of the line to our heads, forcing us to think of something to say. Then in comes Napoleon and he says just what we were thinking, making the moment awkward. Napoleon acts as our internal thoughts, a walking brain that says whatever comes to his head. This explains why everyone around him is constantly mad at him. This is the film’s way of saying that people hate honesty. Honesty is associated with negativity and why it hurts. Characters like Uncle Rico, Kip, and Summer hate Napoleon because he is honest with them. Kip is a prime example of this. When Kip starts hanging out with Napoleon less during the middle of the movie, he gains confidence and gets married at the end.
Napoleon Dynamite is quite the awkward, quirky, and at some points, straight-up cringe movie. But there is a magic here. Another reason this movie is incredibly realistic is its setting. It takes place in rural Idaho, essentially in the middle of nowhere. This was also the time before smartphones and the internet, so it reflects on this time in its painfully slow pacing. People who grew up in this time
can relate to the bored taste in the movie. Napoleon also reflects this because he finds joy in the little things. Trailing his action figure behind the bus, roller skating through time, and drawing fantastical animals are some examples of things he does in the movie that show his boredom or creativity.
Napoleon Dynamite is the most realistic teen high school movie ever made. Most high school movies wouldn’t dare put the viewer in the shoes of the nerd, or the outcast. Napoleon Dynamite does exactly that. Napoleon is bullied by basically everyone around him including his classmates and his family. And the bullying isn’t just physical. He is constantly getting verbally abused by everyone around him. Especially his Uncle Rico. But watching the movie from Napoleon’s point of view gives us an insight into how the outcast sees different situations. In a regular high school movie, the main character encounters a bully but is less affected by it because the main character isn’t the nerd or the one getting bullied. Usually, the main character saves the outcast from the bully. Napoleon never gets saved or helped by a hero. He faces his problems head-on, and we see how he is affected and how he comes back from bullies.
Napoleon isn’t the regular hero we are used to rooting for. He’s socially awkward, indifferent to popularity, and uses his time to draw “ligers” and practice tetherball. He’s the embodiment of the high school outcast-shunned by his peers, misunderstood by his family, and for the most part, unnoticed. But amidst this strangeness, Napoleon offers something universal for us. The painful yet mandatory experience that is adolescence.
In many ways, Napoleon Dynamite is a call to the outcast. A nod to those like Napoleon, who have been ousted by the cool kids and misunderstood by the masses. The success of the film comes from its ability to make the shallow seem hilarious. Napoleon’s interactions with his brother Kip, who spends most of his time browsing online chatrooms on the home computer, and Uncle Rico, a middle-aged man stuck in the glory days of high school football, are absurd but also revealing the loneliness of high school students.
Many of us can learn something from Napoleon Dynamite. The plot is hilariously bland, but it works because of what it makes us feel. We feel sympathy for the characters because of their outcast nature. We grow closer to these characters though we would never even talk to them if they went to Davis High. We laugh at our jokes but would never pay attention to them if they were in our
classes. This contrast is what makes the movie so powerful. It shows how honesty affects people around us, for the better or worse.
