(2004, Dir. Jared Hess)
In Short: A kid from rural Idaho goes to high school and deals with his family. His expressions are consistently as emotionless as that last sentence. We all know that I love Napoleon Dynamite. (I mean, have you seen the “Vote for Pedro” class t-shirts I designed? I love Napoleon Dynamite.) I’ve seen it many times, and it just doesn’t get old. I have always found it really, really funny. Examining why comedy is funny is really tough. Watching this movie for the umpteenth time with the purpose of writing a review, I found myself thinking about why I find this purposefully flat high school comedy to be so...comedic. I think a lot of it is in the “purposefully flat” part. Napoleon doesn’t smile throughout the whole movie. His inflection rarely changes and when it does, it’s only barely, and it’s when he gets just a little bit louder to say “freakin’ idiots” or some such thing. It’s impossible to connect with the protagonist, and that’s weird and uncomfortable at first. There’s no real emotional arc to the movie--someone I know once said, “You feel the same after the first five seconds of Napoleon Dynamite as you do after the whole hour and a half,” and I think that’s pretty astute. It’s that flatness to the main character that accentuates the outlandishness of all the others, and makes them all the more funny. There’s a bored kind of quality that lends itself so well to the deadpan comedy that this movie employs. Crazy situations might be funny paired with over-the-top reactions to those situations’ craziness, but those situations are even funnier, Napoleon Dynamite proves, when there’s no reaction at all. It’s funnier for Napoleon to drink a glass of milk and say, “The defect in this one is bleach,” with absolutely no expression of disgust or any other emotion than it is for him to drink a glass of bleach-laced milk and start gagging or shouting. The Funny is in the flatness. This movie has a very distinct look to it. I’ve heard it described as being part of a “Wes Anderson Genre” and I think that’s fairly accurate. Not only do the characters fit that description, and the wandering plot (reminiscent of Bottle Rocket), but the aesthetic of Napoleon Dynamite is specifically curated in a way similar to Anderson’s films, with overly-kitschy settings and a color palette that is kind of outside life. The sort of cuts and shots employed vary so well and so surprisingly (again, good for the visual kind of comedy that this movie relies on) that it’s an interesting movie to watch despite the integral nature of its blandness. I love Napoleon Dynamite. Case closed.
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AuthorEileen here, writing reviews for film class. Archives
April 2018
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