Film Reviews

Napoleon Dynamite

• Rating:
• Director: Jared Hess
• Starring: Jon Gries
• Details: US / 90 mins (PG).

A tale of unremitting geekitude, Napoleon Dynamite offers a nerd's-eye view of the American High School experience and it ain't a pretty sight. A slack-jawed yokel, Napoleon (Heder) lumbers from one social humiliation to another, most of which are self-inflicted by his petulant attitude and wilful non-conformity. The series of horrendous T-shirts he wears doesn't help his cause either. Surrounded as he is by a collection of uncool outcasts, including his chat room-dependent older brother Kip (Ruell) and an uncle (Gries) who longs for a time-travel machine to take him back to his quarterback days of 1982, it's perhaps inevitable that Napoleon will be an unsympathetic character, but there's no escaping the fact that there's little for the audience to empathise with. By the same token, the off-beat humour is consistently funny if you're prepared to laugh at the misfortunes of others, and there are some clever references to the classic John Hughes-style teen movies of the 1980s.

Review by Garreth Murphy