I wasn't going to see Napoleon Dynamite. When the first promo popped up on a movie screen several months ago, it looked to me like somebody's sad little homemade video designed to make fun of people who are clumsy or socially awkward.
The title character, desperately in need of orthodontia and a clothing and hair makeover, carried nerdiness so far that it seemed cruel to laugh.
Especially because the actor's expressionless, nearly monotonous delivery seemed to be modeled on someone suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, a borderline autistic condition that makes it difficult for its victims to show normal emotions and to make correct judgments about what is socially appropriate.
But then I started hearing from people whose opinions I usually respect that the movie was, in fact, truly funny and wonderful. I was skeptical in the extreme. Finally, though, not quite kicking or screaming but utterly without hope, I tagged along with my daughter, her roommate, and a friend, who had already seen and loved it, to catch a matinee.
I was not wrong. But neither were they.
Napoleon Dynamite is not Revenge of the Nerds set in an Idaho high school. And it is not cruel, in the sense of standing outside someone's unfortunate life and laughing at him.
Instead, we are forced inside his sad, sad life, and the laughs seem to be mostly rueful ones, sympathetic ones. We're not laughing with Napoleon. He's not laughing. His life is very serious to him, his pain is real, and when he lashes out in frustration, we wonder that it took him so long. The audience laughs in an "Oh, no, not again" kind of way.
Except me. I could hardly laugh at all. I'm afraid I identify with characters like this so completely that it becomes almost unbearable to watch. At the very moments when people were laughing the most, I found myself with tears in my eyes, aching for people in so much pain.
In some ways, this movie is almost a documentary. The spread-out landscape, the drab architecture, the sense of isolation -- this is eastern Idaho the way it looks to people who live there.
And it's definitely not a Beverly Hills high school comedy, where it's all about plastic rich kids persecuting the poor or nonconforming. Everybody in town is just getting by.
The pretty and popular girl who seems destined to win the class election works after school at the checkout counter of a store. She has a job. If the person at the pinnacle of the social pyramid needs to work to have spending money, we know we're not in the usual high school comedy.
A truly shocking moment, to the contemporary film-goer, is when Napoleon asks one of the popular girls to be his date to a dance. She is appalled -- as any rational teenage girl who did not know him at all would be. But -- and this is the shocking part -- her mother, believing that Napoleon is mentally challenged, requires her daughter to accept his invitation.
When did you last see a teen comedy in which parents actually expect their children to make morally generous choices? In the real world, that's what good parents do; but on Planet Movie, teen flicks show parents only to mock them for being utterly ineffectual.
There are a lot of things arguably wrong with this film. The older brother is played so effeminately and repulsively that when his online romance finally meets him, it's hard to believe she would actually find him acceptable. Both of Napoleon's friends are almost as flat-affect as he is -- which is simply not true of shy kids in high school, who are as animated as anyone when they're with their friends.
It's unfortunate that the actor playing Uncle Rico is unable to match the honest performances of the other actors. He tries too hard to be funny, and the result is usually the opposite.
The good things, however, outweigh the bad. I can't promise you a screamingly funny laff riot. But I can promise you a story about an inept young man and his two friends who muddle through and, quite accidentally, achieve something rather fine.
And even if the film were worse than it is, it would still be worth it to see the well-earned climax at the election assembly.
