Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite
Napoleon Dynamite DVD
Directed by	Jared Hess
Written by	Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess
Produced by	Jeremy Coon, Sean Covel, Chris Wyatt
Starring	Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, Tina Majorino, Aaron Ruell, Jon Gries
Music by	John Swihart
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight
Running time	82 min.
Budget	$400,000

Napoleon Dynamite is an American independent film written and directed by Jared Hess. The movie is based on the short film he directed at BYU with Jon Heder, Peluca, which was discovered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Napoleon debuted in 2004, earning $116,666 in its opening weekend, and over $44.5 million as of February 6, 2005. The film cost only $400,000 to make. The DVD was released on December 21, 2004. Since its release, it has gained somewhat of a cult film status among Generation Yers and young people, who seem to identify with the film to some degree. In 2005, it won 3 MTV Movie Awards, for Breakthrough Male Performance, Best Musical Performance, and Best Movie. It was filmed in Preston, Idaho, USA.

Introduction

The film follows the protagonist Napoleon Dynamite, a rather slow, dorky high school student with a penchant for milk tasting, drawing, fishing for bass, and telling implausible stories. The film showcases Napoleon's personality and circle of equally quirky friends, family, and associates in his predominantly Mormon hometown of Preston, Idaho. Though the film has been described as "quirky", it is not in the same vein as the Wes Anderson films, as the main character, his brother and some of his friends' behavior at times borders on Asperger's Syndrome, an autism-spectrum condition characterized by extreme social awkwardness and fascination with specific things that many might consider inane or irrelevant to daily life. It is unlikely that this similarity was intended or even recognized by the film-makers, as they have stated in commentaries that their own social awkwardness growing up was the inspiration for the characters. However, the fact that Napoleon's family recognises that he and his 32-year-old brother Kip require adult supervision (they live with their grandmother, who sends their Uncle Rico to look after them while she is hospitalised) seems to imply that there may be more to the situation than simple social ineptitude.

Plot

Template:Spoiler There is no strongly focused plot, but the movie follows the growth of the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro, Pedro's venture to become school president, and their relationship with Deb. The characters are all very extreme, which may represent the extremes in a common society or common "high school life".

Main characters

File:Napoleon tetherball.jpg

Deb plays tetherball with Napoleon.

• Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), the film's protagonist, is a nerd who loves to draw fantasy creatures and calls most other people "flippin' idiots". However, he lacks the aptitude typically associated with nerds, having attempted time travel with a crude device his Uncle Rico purchased on the Internet. He enjoys tater tots and tetherball. He is active in the Future Farmers of America and his school's Happy Hands Club. His best friends are Pedro and Deb.
• Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez) is a new student from Colonia Juárez, Mexico. He is occasionally the target of mild antagonism on the part of the school principal. He runs for class president.
• Deb (Tina Majorino) is a shy and awkward schoolmate. She is interested in photography, and spends her time trying to earn money for college by selling glamour shots and boondoggle keychains. She often wears her hair in a single ponytail off to one side. Deb seems to be the least articulate character in the film.
• Kipling "Kip" Ronald Dynamite (Aaron Ruell) is Napoleon's wimpy older brother ("like 32 years old") who enjoys online dating and claims to be training to become a cage fighter. He and Napoleon live with their grandmother.
• Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) is the sleazy uncle of Napoleon and Kip. Rico lives in an old RV in the middle of a field. He played football in his younger days ("Back in '82") and longs to go back in time and change his fortunes. Uncle Rico enjoys eating (sometimes spitting out) steak. He watches Kip and Napoleon while their Grandma is in the hospital due to a broken coccyx. During this time, he and Kip bumble through a variety of business engagements, such as selling Tupperware and herbal breast augmentation.

Secondary characters

• Summer Wheatly (Haylie Duff) is a stereotypical blonde cheerleader who runs for school president against Pedro.
• Don (Trevor Snarr) is Summer's cocky boyfriend. He helps Summer on her campaign for class president and occasionally teases Napoleon and Pedro.
• Trisha (Emily Kennard) is one of Summer's good friends, and is forced into going with Napoleon to the school dance.
• LaFawnduh Lucas (Shondrella Avery) is a woman Kip met over the Internet. She is tall and stylish, contrasting with Kip's short, pale, and awkward demeanor. After spending time with her, Kip changes his clothes and demeanor to mimic African-American or white rapper stereotypes. In the post-credit sequence, she and Kip are wed.
• Rex (Diedrich Bader) is sensei of the "Rex Kwon Do" martial arts dojo. He is an ex-ultimate fighter and charges a large fee for his services ($300 for an 8-week program). He is a very confident man and is married to Starla (Carmen Brady), a female bodybuilder.
• Grandma (Sandy Martin) is grandmother of Napoleon and Kip. She breaks her coccyx on a jump in her four wheeler at the sand dunes while on a date. According to Rico, there is a lot Napoleon and Kip do not know about her.
• Randy (Bracken Johnson) is the school bully. He frequently injures and robs Napoleon and other nerds.
• Tina (Tina the Llama) is the stubborn llama that belongs to Napoleon's grandmother.
• Ilene (Ellen Dubin)

Background information

Preston, Idaho is a real town located near the Utah border, and is predominantly Mormon. Since the release of Napoleon, it has become a tourist attraction of sorts, with the school, Preston High School, being a main feature. Preston held a Napoleon Dynamite Festival celebrating the film on June 24-25,2005, and an estimated 6000 people attended the two-day event. Napoleon T-shirts have also become somewhat hot commodities in 2005, selling at many stores that sell novelty shirts, such as Hot Topic. In April 2005, the Idaho state legislature approved a bill commending the filmmakers for producing Napoleon Dynamite, specifically enumerating the benefits the movie has brought to Idaho as well as for showcasing various aspects of Idaho's culture and economy [1].

The film also displays many quirky references to Mormon popular culture. Napoleon uses euphemisms like flip and heck that are common in Mormon circles, as alternatives to swearing. He wears a t-shirt for Ricks College, the former junior college located in Rexburg, Idaho now known as BYU Idaho. In the DVD extras, there is an interview with Jon Heder in which he jokes that perhaps Napoleon and Deb may be "sealed for time and all eternity"—a reference to the Mormon belief in "eternal marriage" or "sealing" performed in LDS temples. The principal's reference to "Juarez"—where he assumes Pedro is from—is a reference to Colonia Juarez, a Mormon colony in Mexico founded to evade U.S. polygamy laws in the nineteenth century. Characters, even those intended to be the popular girls, do not wear shorts any shorter than knee-length. Fashions in Mormon culture tend to be more modest than those of popular culture.

While the film is set in the present-day, some viewers dispute the temporal setting due to several factors. For example, the music playing at the school dance is from the 1980s, featuring Alphaville and Cyndi Lauper. Other vestiges of earlier decades include fashion trends that reflect those of the 70s and 80s, and a VCR in the Dynamite residence that resembles those from the early days of video technology. Throwbacks to the 1990s come from music by the Backstreet Boys and Jamiroquai used in the choreography of Summer and Pedro's skits. Kip uses the Internet for dating and purchasing a "time machine". However, the model of computer is arguably from at least the early to mid 1990's and he is using a dial up internet service that charges users by how long they have been on, a practice uncommon since at least 1997. Uncle Rico (who appears to be in his late 30s to early 40s) frequently refers to his high school glory days of 1982 (the date on which he set the aforementioned "time machine"). Finally, Napoleon's school ID card, as shown in the opening credits, clearly reads "2004/2005," unambigously setting the movie in the present-day.

The retro aspects of the movie have been suggested by some to be a depiction of cultural stagnation, or an homage to similar genre films of the 1980s, such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off. When asked when his movie was set, writer/director Jared Hess simply replied, "Idaho."

Themes

All the characters of Napoleon Dynamite experience a rite-of-passage. Virtually everyone in the movie is stuck either in the 80's era or a past state-of-mind. This is evident in Deb's fashion sense (her hair and wardrobe), Uncle Rico's appearance and wistfulness, Kip's fashion sense (a nerdy, retro wardrobe and excessively large glasses), and Pedro's bewilderment at being reprimanded for practicing a Mexican tradition. Towards the end of the movie, however, everyone snaps out of the past and into the present. To that end, Kip ditches the Internet for LaFawnduh and subsequently a new style, Rico's ex returns to him, Deb dons a new hair style, Pedro wins over his new classmates, and the popular crowd becomes inverted with those previously considered unpopular.

Although presented subtly, diversity is a common theme in the film: Napoleon and Kip find victory and love, respectively, in African-American culture; Pedro, a Mexican, triumphs over the stereotypical blonde-haired American cheerleader. The uniting nature of diversity is more clearly expressed in a scene after the end credits in which Kip and LaFawnduh are married, where people of all backgrounds come together to celebrate within the predominantly white, conservative town.

Cultural Effect

Napoleon Dynamite has had a very visible impact on popular culture since its theatrical release in June 2004 (an example of its powerful memes). Repeating memorable quotations from the movie, such as "heck yes", "gosh", "freakin' idiot", and "Vote for Pedro", has become a trendy part of popular youth culture. Although the only official movie merchandise is the DVD, many retailers are selling unofficial clothing and other merchandise based on the film, particularly "Vote for Pedro" t-shirts designed to look like the amateurish shirts worn in the movie.

Trivia

• The dishes shown in the opening credits are all eaten at some point in the movie, and in the case of cast members, eaten by their respective characters.
• Jon Gries is a vegetarian, and spat out every bite of red meat he chewed during filming.
• During some scenes of the movie, Napoleon is seen wearing a Ricks College T-shirt. Ricks was a junior college in Idaho that became Brigham Young University-Idaho in 2001.
• Jon Heder freestyled most of his dance routine with the help of Tina Majorino (Deb), who is a hip-hop instructor. Some of the moves included drew inspiration from *NSYNC and Michael Jackson. Heder mentioned in a post-production interview that he figured "almost half" of the dance moves came from watching John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
• Jon Gries wore a wig for the role of Uncle Rico. The wig attracted flies throughout filming, as seen in the film.
• Several scenes in the movie are the results of improvisation, such as Kip's reaction to backing over the Tupperware bowl.
• Jon Heder has his hair permed for the "Napoleon" look.
• The boy sitting with Napoleon in the back of the bus was a local who came in for audition.
• The music used in the scene where Napoleon showcases his dancing skills is "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai.
• The music used in the campaign poster montage is the A-Team theme song.
• The lady on the bicycle who approaches Rico near the end of the film is his ex, who is mentioned earlier in the movie. She was played by Aaron Ruell's wife, Julia.
• All 181 student extras in the film are individually listed in the closing credits.
• Napoleon enjoys dancing, and belongs to the "Happy Hands" club, which practices sign singing. He joined this club because "all of the other sweet clubs were filled" (this is revealed in the deleted scene "Second Locker Room" on the Napoleon Dynamite DVD).
• Napoleon's "moon boots" by the end of the movie were falling apart and were being held together by duct tape. Heder also said that they started to smell.
• Preston High School, Napoleon's high school, has started an actual "Happy Hands Club" since the release of the film.
• "Napoleon Dynamite" was a pseudonym used by Elvis Costello in the credits of his 1986 album Blood and Chocolate. Executive producer Jeremy Coon has stated that the similarity is a coincidence and that the producers were unaware of Costello's usage of the name until the film was in production.
• There is an extra scene on the DVD after the credits that shows Kip and LaFawnduh's marriage ceremony two months later. The scene was filmed after the unexpected commercial success of the movie, and was added to later releases of the film and placed after the credits. It reportedly cost more to film the single extra scene than it did to film the rest of the movie.
• Napoleon's favorite animal, the liger, is actually a real animal, and exists in zoos as a result of mating a male lion with a female tiger. They are not, however, bred for their skills in magic.
• In the 2005 National Spelling Bee, after asking for the definition of a word, one student uttered the phrase "Do the chickens have large talons?", then proceeded to spell the word.
• Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez reprised their roles in the Adult Swim show Robot Chicken, which would involve Napoleon in the role his namesake was in.
• Tina was also Deb's real name coinciding with the fact that Napoleon said "Tina come get some dinner" (referring to the llama shortly after Deb left.

Soundtrack List

• "We're Going to Be Friends" by The White Stripes
• "A-team Theme"
• "Forever Young" by Alphaville
• "Larger than Life" by Backstreet Boys
• "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai
• "So Rough, So Tough by Zapp and Roger
• "The Promise" by When in Rome
• "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper
• "Light In Your Eyes" by Sheryl Crow

See also

• List of movies whose title is eponymous with a character in it
• Peluca

External links

• Official site for Napoleon Dynamite
• Napoleon Dynamite at IMDb
• NapoleonStuff.com - A Great Fan Site
• Napoleon Dynamite sound clips (Flash required) on albinoblacksheep.com
• Napoleon Dynamite sound clips (Flash required) on collegehumor.com
• Idaho's resolution commending Jared and Jerusha Hess
• The Preston Chamber Gift Shop
• A Sweet Road Trip to Preston, Idaho