I watched Napoleon Dynamite, director Jared Hess’ second movie and the movie used to promote Nacho Libre, and I loved it.
The thing is, it’s one of those movies which you’d probably feel you shouldn’t have liked. I’ve always been big on movies with good stories, and Napoleon Dynamite is the opposite. It’s a hodgepodge of almost unrelated skits and situations, like those Tito, Vic and Joey movies of yore, where the chief character(s) just bounce around from scene to scene and something funny happens.
The saving grace is Napoleon himself, played by Jon Heder, who exudes dorkability to the extreme. He’s not a geek. He’s not a misunderstood nice guy. He’s a complete dweeb at the ultimate level, the kind of guy you couldn’t get far away enough from in school. So who cared about the disjointed skits? Napoleon Dynamite is such an insufferable dork you’re replaying his scenes, buying his t-shirts and voting for Pedro months after the movie (incidentally you’d have to have watched it to understand what that meant).