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Napoleon Dynamite (2004) Review

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Genre: Comedy

Length: 1:35:00

Release date: June 11, 2004

Director(s): Jared Hess

So, :iconjohntheguy1: requested me to review the 2012 cartoon Napoleon Dynamite based off of the 2004 movie of the same name. But, if you know me, I like to review everything that is part of the same series, including all the episodes, movies, shorts, etc..

I told John that I would review the cartoon without watching the movie, since I never have before checking it out, but when I watched the cartoon, well… let’s just say I didn’t find it to be very interesting. Then I thought: “Hey, maybe I’ll understand its humour more if I watch the original movie!”. And, that’s exactly what I did. What do I think of the movie? Well, let’s find out!

The Review



The movie starts with the titular character, Napoleon Dynamite, played by Jon Heder, catching the school bus. When he gets on, he throws one of his action figures out the window while holding a string, trying to make him fly… Except it just ends up dragging across the pavement.

Yeah, Napoleon is meant to play the social outcast character in this film, and a lot of the movie’s humour is by making fun of those social outcasts. I can see a lot of people finding this hilarious, but there are certainly many others who will be offended. It’s gotten quite the number of mixed reviews over the years because of this. Personally, it’s not my type of humour, because while I’m not as much of a social outcast as Napoleon, I don’t really find this kind of humour funny, since I am a pretty big nerd/geek myself.

Anyways, we follow Napoleon to school where we see him do a presentation on blowing the loch ness monster out of the water, playing tether ball by himself in the playground, and getting bullied; typical social outcast jokes. He then calls up his 32 year old brother, Kip Dynamite, played by Aaron Ruell, saying he doesn’t feel good and wants his grandmother to pick him up. But, since she’s not around, he hangs up.

He then sees the principal trying to teach a foreign Mexican male from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico where the cafeteria is. His name is Pedro Sánchez, played by Efren Ramirez. Napoleon confronts them and he slows Pedro to his locker. Pedro then shows him his bike, and they each ride it. And, they soon become friends.

Back at Napoleon’s house, his grandmother, played by Sandy Martin, tells him and Kip that she’s going to hang out with their aunt and their other friends tonight and she’s not gonna be back until tomorrow.

When their grandma leaves, they get a knock at the door. Napoleon answers it and the girl says her name is Deb Bradshaw, played by Tina Majorino, who’s offering 75% off at Glamour Shots by Deb along with boondoggle key chains to save money for college. When Kip insults her for that, she runs off, leaving all her stuff on their front porch.

After Napoleon finishes feeding their llama, Tina, Kip convinces them both to attend the Rex Kwan Do Self-Defence System, but they leave because they thought it was a rip-off. Well, THAT scene was pointless! Though, a lot of scenes could be taken out of this movie and nothing would change. Yeah, it’s THAT kind of movie. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, there are a lot of jokes put into them that a lot of people would laugh at, and while it gets a slight chuckle out of me, I really wouldn’t mind if they were cut out entirely.

Anyways, Napoleon and Pedro are hanging out at the bleachers outside, talking about the school dance. Pedro tells Napoleon that he’s gonna ask out Summer Wheatley, played by Haylie Duff, pretty much one of the pretty girls at the school. At lunch, Napoleon decides to go over and talk to Deb, giving her stuff back.

Back home, their uncle, Rico Dynamite, played by Jon Gries, comes over, saying their grandma broke her tailbone at the sand dunes with her boyfriend. He says that he’s gonna take care of them while their grandma gets better.

At a restaurant called Big J’s, Kip and Rico are hanging out. Kip says of how he’s chatting online with a girl, and he’s trying to raise money to have her come over to his place some day. Rico says of how he has a project that, if Kip helps him with it, can make them both get a lot of money.

At Summer’s house, Pedro is delivering a cake to her to convince her to go to the dance with him with the help of Napoleon.

At the front porch, Rico is reminiscing over how he didn’t have his way with football back in 1982. He says of how if the coach would’ve put him in fourth, he could be making millions of dollars. He asks Kip if he’s ever come across time travel in cyberspace. He says that he’s already looked into it, which makes Rico happy.

Back at school, Summer gives Napoleon a letter to Pedro. When he opens it up, he sees that Summer rejected Pedro’s offer. But, Pedro isn’t around that day, so he doesn’t know that. At his house, he calls Pedro, but someone else on the other end of the line says he isn’t around.

At the bowling alley, Kip and Rico are talking more about their project. They decide that they should have their picture taken and put them on name tags to make them look official. They head to Deb who takes a picture of them both.

Back at school, Napoleon heads to Pedro, and Napoleon says that Summer said: “No!!!” for going to the dance with him. He says he also asked out Deb, and right on cue, Deb comes over to their table and gives Pedro the letter. And, guess what? She said: “Yes!!!”. Napoleon is bummed out that no one will go out with him, but Pedro has the idea of drawing a picture of the girl he wants to take out and give it to her, since Napoleon believes that he can draw really well. So, he decides to draw a picture of Trisha Stevens, played by Emily Kennard, and give it to her mother, since Trisha isn’t at her house at the moment. But, he find Rico there, selling Trisha’s mother plastic bowls.

Napoleon gets mad at his brother because he thinks Rico is trying to make him look bad in front of Trisha’s mom, and he knows that they’re both working together. Rico says than Napoleon is getting angry because they both have a job and he doesn’t. So, Napoleon goes to work at a chicken coop, but he only gets $6 in the 6 hours he’s been working there.

Trisha calls Napoleon up and says she’ll go to the dance with him, but only because her mom makes her (she doesn’t want Trisha to make someone else feel bad, especially not a boy who wants to go out with her).

Napoleon asks Rico if he could drive him to the dance after he’s done with his business, and Rico agrees. However, Napoleon starts to get impatient and runs off only to get picked up by Pedro’s cousins. Well, how sweet of them! They also pick up Trisha, driving them to the dance.

At the dance, Trisha decides to ditch Napoleon to hang out with her friends. Well, that’s not so sweet. Pedro, feeling sorry for Napoleon, decides to let him dance with Deb for a bit.

Pedro then sees a poster on the wall for electing class presidents. He tells Napoleon about it and he 100% supports him in it.

Back at their house, Napoleon checks out a “time machine” that Kip and Rico bought online. But, it turns out it doesn’t work.

Back at school after Napoleon and Pedro’s FFA meeting, they see that Summer is also running for class president! Pedro’s head gets hot and he heads home.

Kip and Rico meet up again at Big J’s, and Kip says he’s found his soulmate named LaFawnduh Lucas who’s flying out from Detroit. Rico tries to get him to sell their new product to her, which makes Kip mad.

Napoleon meets up with Pedro in a hoodie, and Pedro reveals that he shaved off his head because his hair was making his head really hot. Deb then gives him a wig to wear, and they head back to school and put up posters everywhere they can while handing keychains to the students to vote for Pedro.

In the school, he sees one of the nerdy kids is getting bullied, and when the bully goes away, Napoleon gives the nerd a keychain, saying:

Napoleon: “Pedro offers you his protection.”

Back outside, the bully harasses him again, but then the same car that picked up Napoleon and Trisha for the dance comes back with the same guys, this time with the writing “Vote for Pedro” on the side. Afraid, the bully runs off.

We then see Kip uniting with LaFawnduh, played by Shondrella Avery.

Rico then pulls up to Summer and Trisha and tells them to give a few flyers to their moms. What are the flyers about? Something called “Bust Must+” that increases breast size. It’s also seen that there are a lot put up on Napoleon’s locker, which makes Napoleon angry.

Pedro then gets in trouble with the principal since he make a piñata that looks like Summer, but according to Pedro, he does it all the time in Mexico.

After practicing some dance moves, LaFawnduh hears about and gives him a cassette that her cousin made to help him out. She and Kip then go out on their date.

While Deb and Rico are deciding on what they should do for their photo shoot, Rico gives her the Bust flyer, lying to her that Napoleon told him she would be interested. She then calls up Napoleon and pretty much tells him that she heard what Rico said, and she’s perfectly fine with the body she has, and calls him a shallow friend before hanging up. He obviously gets very mad at Rico.

But, when Rico tries to make Rex’s wife’s breasts bigger, Rex beats him up, getting the punishment he finally deserves.

We then get to the election speeches. Summer is up first, and then she performs her skit. However, neither Napoleon nor Pedro knew they had to perform a skit. So, Pedro then gets down on himself because he doesn’t believe he’ll be class president. After his speech, Napoleon refuses to let Pedro believe he won’t be class president. So, what does he do? Perform one of the greatest solo dance performances in the history of cinema. I’m dead serious. It’s awesome. I mean, it doesn’t have a bunch of fancy visuals or anything, but… DANG. Jon Heder can DANCE! And, yeah. The dance wasn’t scripted. I mean, a solo dance performance was scripted to happen, but the dance itself was all improv. That just makes it all the more awesome.

So, after the music ends abruptly and Napoleon runs off stage, you’d expect the audience to either not say anything or laugh, right? Well, no. They loved it. Applause, cheering, whistling, everything. Honestly, there couldn’t have been a better way for them to react.

So, that’s pretty much the end of it. Kip and LaFawnduh get on a bus, Grandma returns home, Rico’s ex-girlfriend returns to him, and Napoleon and Deb play a game of tetherball.





… Or is it the end? Because after the credits, 2 months later, we get Kip and LaFawnduh’s wedding. However, Napoleon’s nowhere to be seen even though the rest of his family and even his friends are there. But, while Kip is singing his love song, Napoleon comes along on a horse! He says that it took him so long to get to the wedding because he was training the horse so that Kip and LaFawnduh could ride it on their honeymoon. Napoleon gets off and Kip and LaFawnduh get on the horse and ride off.

Napoleon: “Lucky!”

My Thoughts



So, that was my first film review! Honestly, it took much shorter of a time than I thought it would. But, that’s probably because I left a lot of scenes out that weren’t worth mentioning.

What did I think of the film overall? I thought it was pretty decent. While I didn’t find every moment to be funny that were supposed to be, there are definitely a considerable amount that got at least a chuckle out of me. Pretty much the only people I would not recommend this to are the extreme social outcasts such as Napoleon and Kip. I think they would be easily offended by this.

So, now, I’m gonna get into the actual cartoon that :iconjohntheguy1: requested. I just wanted to get the movie out of the way first to get my true opinions on it.

Rating: 7.5/10 (Decent/Good)

Next review: SpongeBob SquarePants: “Naughty Nautical Neighbors”
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torygreen's avatar
That was my child hood growing up, also can't wait for your NNN review