directed
by Jared Hess
USA 2004
Napoleon Dynamite is cinema’s most obnoxious geek ever. He
is dumb as in low intelligence, he believes his pathetic mediocrity is talent,
he lives in a world of his own, where he is the best and hates everyone who
doesn’t agree. And those are his good qualities.
He only has one friend, an equally dumb, but better looking and less
solipsistic, Mexican student (in Idaho), Pedro. Pedro is despite his lacking
of any facial expression, which he shares with Napoleon, a go getter and when
failing to invite the schools cheerleader, Summer, to the dance, he quickly
gets a date with Deb, who secretly has a crush on Napoleon, and finally runs
for school president. As a story, it comes off as a third person variation of
"Rushmore" without any story.
It takes about ten seconds before you hate Napoleon as a person, and then you
begin to pity everyone else around him. He literary deserves any beating he
gets at school, he attracts even the weakest school bully, because he is such
a geek. In short: Napoleon is the poorest excuse for a human being ever put on
screen.
It reminds me a lot of the films by Todd Solondz, but Hess direction is too
laid-back indy and his characters are too extremely, thus they become one
dimensional in their complexity, which again makes many of the stories
unrealistic. No one would ever make their daughter date someone as Napoleon. A
ebony beauty as LaFawnduh would never fall in love with someone as Kip,
Napoleons 31 year old virgin chat addicted nerd brother. The entire world we
see is like taken out of an episode of the Twilight Zone, part reality, part
Napoleons own imagination, and in the end the film stands out as being painful
to watch, not so much because of the actions of its characters, but because
Hess seems to direct his films as if he was Napoleon himself. In short:
Without these characters, the film would not exist.
There is a sharp contrast between the films characters. On one side people are
social horrors like Kip, Pedro and Napoleon, who make up their own world, like
the local tough guy, who teaches people Rex-Kwon-Do. On the other side, people
are normal people. The constrast is however too black and white to make it
believable. So what is the idea with this contrast? What is the idea with
portraiting a character like Napoleon?
The question I ask is: With a film like “Napoleon Dynamite”, what direction
can indy film now take? Where Solondz, Jamusch, Anderson and others have
established themselves as, at least, semi mainstream, is indy now in the hands
of gifted amateurs who substitute “being different” with “being a social
horror”, social isolation with social outcast, and misinterpret emotionless
action with wooden acting? In line of such questions, “Napoleon Dynamite” may
well become a landmark film in terms of the direction of indy film.
Posters
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Theatrical Release: January 17, 2004 (Sundance Film Festival)
Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews
DVD Review: Paramount Home Entertainment - Region 2,4 - PAL
Big thanks to Henrik Sylow for the Review!
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CLICK to order from:
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| Distribution |
Paramount Home Entertainment Region 2,4 - PAL |
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| Runtime | 1:30:49 (4% PAL speedup) | |
| Video |
1.78:1 Aspect Ratio
16X9 enhanced |
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NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes. |
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| Audio | 5.1 Dolby Digital English, 5.1 Dolby Digital German (dub), 5.1 Dolby Digital Spanish (dub) | |
| Subtitles | English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and More | |
| Features |
Release Information: Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment Aspect Ratio:
Edition Details: Chapters 20 |
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| Comments | This
generic non-R1 release is basically the same as R1, except it lacks the
8-minute short "Peluca" by Hess and the full frame 1.33:1 version. The image is quiet decent, suffering from Macro Blocking and minor edge enhancements. But when changing chapters, the image gets serious pixelation problems, displaying serious color banding and clusters. The additional material is lacking. The audio commentary is boring and dull, offering a little insight here and there, but overall not enough. A 4 minute "making of" featurette is almost a joke and then some deleted scenes. |
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Subtitle sample (English only)
Captures resized to 800px from 1016px
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Pixelation errors during
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| Distribution |
Paramount Home Entertainment Region 2,4 - PAL |
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