In the aftermath of an independent-film explosion, and in the shadow of the burgeoning artistic influence of idiosyncratic filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Todd Solondz, new young directors found themselves able to tackle suburban and rural quirk on a low budget with dividends paid off in the form of a huge, built-in audience. Even in 2024, there is perhaps no bigger success at being and doing these things than co-writer/director Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite, which premiered to amusement and bemusement at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and quickly found distribution, through what was then known as Fox Searchlight Pictures, the following June. Indeed, as longtime users of social media will undoubtedly remember, a large number of the GIFs that people used in the early days of two particular platforms came from scenes in this movie.
In other words, it was a meme before we really understood the extent of the term, but its status as a cultural earworm and mainstay all developed naturally, through the simple expedient of delighted word-of-mouth. There is more, though, to Napoleon Dynamite, the movie, and Napoleon Dynamite, the character, than a flash-in-the-pan curio providing some good quotes and memorable moments might suggest. As with the best of Anderson’s early work, Hess (often directing with similarly elaborate symmetry) and his co-screenwriter/wife Jerusha Hess tap into some real truths within this character and the surrounding ones that populate his little closed world.
As played by an instantly memorable Jon Heder, Napoleon is a wholly original character, from his puffed blond afro to his terminally disaffected attitude to his wholesome but desperately lonely world view, which has led to an impulse to exaggerate the details of his life. He’s a daydreamer, but his awkwardness, as well as his meager but oddball home life, have rather intervened in any of the ambitions he’s had for himself. His reckless daredevil of a grandmother, Carlinda (Sandy Martin), is laid up in the hospital after a quad-bike accident. His older brother, Kip (a hilarious Aaron Ruell), has been enjoying an over-the-internet relationship for some time now, and he plans to bring his girlfriend to their rural Idaho home. His uncle, Rico (Jon Gries), dreams only of making up for his failed NFL career and now employs Napoleon and Kip in a get-rich-quick scheme.
At school, things are no better. Indeed, they’re quite a bit worse, as Napoleon has no friends, is the constant target of people’s shoulder-shoves into his locker door and even his attempts to enjoy a nice little snack of tater tots are regularly thwarted by the school bullies. Two relationships wind up being important to him in the halls of the school, though. First is Pedro (Efren Ramirez), an equally awkward transfer student hailing from Mexico, whose own ambitions include running for class president, pitting him against resident popular girl Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff). Napoleon offers to be his secretary-slash-bodyguard, and much of the movie is devoted to Pedro’s grassroots campaign against all odds.
The other relationship is with Deb (Tina Majorino), a plain but ambitious girl who wears her hair in a side ponytail and runs a small, door-to-door business in order to raise money for college. She and Napoleon hit it off as fast friends, since each of them is highly interesting to the other, and the two even attend the school dance with each other, following a disastrous scheme of Uncle Rico’s to pair him with another, less interested girl. It should be clear by now that the enormous optimism of the movie’s story involves characters who are ambitious, who look forward with determination in spite of the odds stacked against them and who are only limited by their limiting surroundings.
Pedro becomes class president by the skin of his teeth and with no small amount of help from Napoleon’s dance skills. Deb’s own skills as a fashion expert pay off through hard work. Kip’s girlfriend LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery) arrives, and even though the image of their relationship is a unique one, especially when she gives him a “makeover” of sorts, it’s also a fundamentally healthy relationship, whether based around a joke or not. Even Uncle Rico, whose clever schemes lead nowhere but to heartache and disappointment, is, more or less, happy by the end.
The most intriguing character, besides Napoleon, is Deb, whose friendship with him fractures a bit through a minor but embarrassing misunderstanding. Majorino’s performance is notable here for how much the actor does with a minimalistic approach, and the final moment between the two characters hits unexpectedly hard, as it comes after an absence for Deb, during which she, sporting a different hairstyle and an altered vibe, clearly went on her own journey of self-discovery. That Napoleon Dynamite has the grace even to acknowledge character moments like this is a sign of how special it was then and remains to this day.
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