BY PAUL BOWERS
INK
Contributor
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Napoleon is
your average moon-boot-sporting, llama-feeding, nunchuck-wielding geek. He
likes dangling action figures out the bus window and drawing ligers (mixed
offspring of a lion and a tiger, bred for their skills in magic).
And he's the
coolest guy in Idaho.
The movie
"Napoleon Dynamite" is a modern-day cult classic among disaffected
teenagers, and the gawky protagonist somehow has risen to fame as the new guru
of cool. Forget "Revenge of the Nerds." This is cinematic chicken
soup for the loser's soul.
"Most
people can relate to Napoleon," says David Dye, 16, a sophomore at Fort
Dorchester High School, "because sometimes you feel like the loser kid in
school."
Apparently,
dorks and popular kids alike can appreciate the roll-on-the-floor humor. Since
the DVD was released Dec. 21, it has stayed afloat on the Billboard Top 10 sales
chart.
Eve Halley,
16, a sophomore at Summerville High School, says she has seen the movie
somewhere around 20 times.
So what is it
that makes "Napoleon Dynamite" so outrageously popular? It's not a
stellar plotline. There basically isn't one. The whole film is a rambling
journey through a mundane, rural existence, following Napoleon around in the
oppressively boring community of Preston, Idaho.
No actual
story develops until halfway through the movie, when Napoleon's friend, Pedro
(who just moved to Preston from Mexico), works up the nerve to run for class
president against the obnoxiously popular Summer Wheatly. From that point on,
the loosely knit posse of geeks is in campaign mode, leading up to the
semiclimactic scene in which Napoleon uses his hidden powers to thwart their
political nemesis.
The acting
isn't going to win any awards, either. No offense, but it doesn't take a lot of
theatrical finesse to deliver memorable lines such as, "I caught you a
delicious bass," or, "Your mom goes to college." Napoleon's face
remains emotionless throughout most of the movie, and his pseudo-girlfriend's
sideways ponytail is incessantly annoying, but the characters remain believable
because the quirks fit their antisocial, self-conscious lifestyles.
It would seem
that the movie was destined from the start to be pigeonholed as just another
obscure independent film, especially with a budget of less than $50,000 (just a
little bit more than was spent on "The Blair Witch Project"). This is
a movie with no special effects, no big-name actors and no stunts, except, of
course, for the insane bike stunt in which Pedro gets "like 3 feet of
air."
So if it's not
the plot, the acting or the flashy visuals, then what makes "Napoleon
Dynamite" tick? It's something that Hollywood always has tried to
accomplish. It connects with the audience when the audience least expects it.
People get so caught up in the oddball humor that they scarcely notice how
attached they've become to the characters.
After all,
these are people everybody has known at some point growing up. There's the
snotty cheerleader, the uncle who lives in the past, the 32-year-old dweeb who
never leaves his grandma's house and, of course, the poufy-haired kid who draws
mythological beasts all day.
And the things
the characters go through are common experiences for anyone who has lived
through high school. Who hasn't, at some point, gotten ditched at a school
dance, taken or given a beat-down, or spent a summer in Alaska hunting
wolverines?
It's a cosmic
connection that can't be explained in laymen's terms; it probably has something
to do with Jungian archetypes or the collective unconscious (or something like
that). It's about a group of freaks and geeks on their symbolic Hero's Journey
through the daunting obstacles of the real world. Aside from that, everything
that's unfair, lame or just plain stupid about growing up is subtly satirized
in Napoleon's universe.
That's why
it's such a huge hit at high schools across the nation. Just walk through the
crowded hallways of any local educational institution saying, "Gosh!"
indignantly, and somebody's sure to respond with a resounding
"Idiot!"
"Napoleon
Dynamite" is the biggest thing since tater tots, and that's really saying
something. "It teaches you to be your own person," explains Dylan
Summer, a 16-year-old junior at Fort Dorchester High who has a "Flippin'
Sweet" T-shirt inspired by the movie.
Images and
quotes from the movie are popping up everywhere: on shirts, bumper stickers,
buttons, posters and even on reproductions of Napoleon's avant-garde wardrobe.
Hot Topic at Northwoods Mall dedicated an entire section of the store to
Napoleon-themed merchandise, then ran out and was waiting for a new shipment of
items last week.
Schools have
been polarized into two factions: There are the enlightened students who have
witnessed the glory of Napoleon, and then there are the poor saps who think of
Napoleon as a French conqueror. It's easy to spot members of the first group.
They're the ones sporting "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts and loudly
complaining, "But my lips hurt real bad!"
Napoleon and
his friends have spawned dozens of such inside jokes, all part of a widespread
"Napoleonic complex."
Last November,
the small town of Preston (where the movie was filmed) hosted a Napoleon
Dynamite Festival, complete with a tetherball tournament and a steak-throwing
contest, according to the Utah State college newspaper. The previously unheard
of community has rallied under its newfound fame, eternally thankful for the
movie that put it on the map.
In much the
same sense, geeks, losers and "Dungeons & Dragons" enthusiasts
around the country have united under the flag of "Napoleon Dynamite."
For the first time in recent history, their way of life has been brought into
the spotlight, and it has been declared "flippin' sweet."
'Dynamite' Dialogue
"Napoleon
Dynamite" lines you'll probably hear like infinity times a day:
-- Napoleon:
"I see you're drinking 1 percent. Is that 'cause you think you're fat?
'Cause you're not. You could be drinking whole if you wanted to."
-- Grandma:
"Knock it off, Napoleon, just make yourself a dang quesa-dilluh!"
-- Napoleon:
"Tina, eat. Food. Eat the FOOD!"
-- Pedro:
"If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true."
-- Napoleon:
"You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking
skills. ... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills."
-- Kip:
"Your mom goes to college."
-- Napoleon:
"I already made like infinity of those at Scout camp."
Source:
Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com