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Dumb And Stupider

Essay by   •  November 11, 2010  •  1,129 Words (5 Pages)  •  1,192 Views

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it shows the occasional superheroics of ordinary life

his alien antics, for he is, from beginning to end, so consistently otherworldly and insulated from reality that whatever interior life he may have remains entirely inaccessible, making any kind of empathy or identification with him impossible. Looking at the world through bespectacled eyes that are almost completely shut, reacting to everything - good or bad - with the same pained expression, barely seeming even to register his own final moment of triumph, and spending most of his time talking about fantasy beasts and nunchaku skills, Napoleon seems to inhabit a world from which the viewer is forever excluded - which makes him far easier to laugh at than laugh with, despite the film's pretensions to championing outsiders. Add to this the fact that Napoleon seems borderline retarded, and all the jokes at his expense might leave you feeling, upon reflection, more than a little uncomfortable - even if at the time they do seem very funny indeed.

What is touching, however, and perhaps the film's central theme, is the strength, however strangely expressed, of the friendship between Napoleon, Deb and Pedro, and the different favours which the three do to support each other once they have gravitated together into a unit. This, more than the myriad of throwaway subplots involving ripoff time-machines, martial arts classes, tupperware, internet dating, hungry llamas and herbal breast enhancers, is what remains memorable about 'Napoleon Dynamite' - while the scene in which Napoleon finally achieves his heroic triumph is so miraculously unhinged that you really will be left believing that "all your wildest dreams will come true".

It's Got: Lots of people saying "dang", "sweey" and "jeez", the phrase "our underwater ally" applied to the loch Ness monster, a ham-eating llama called Tina, 'Dance Grooves' videos, magical ligers, chickens with "large talons", egg juice, a perfect politician's wig, performances without cinematic parallel from Jon Heder as Napoleon and the mighty Efren Ramirez as Pedro - and of course 'Rex Kwon Do'.

Steep in deadpan humor and wry jokes, add just a pinch of truth, and you've got yourself a high school hit.

He thinks that he possesses some sweet ninja skills, but he ends up getting beaten up by bullies like Don (Trevor Snarr) and Randy (Bracken Johnson.) Napoleon has a few odd tastes that are all his own: he likes to play one-person tetherball, he likes to draw pictures (especially of fantasy characters, like a "liger," a half-lion, half-tiger), dragging action figures out of the school bus window by a string, and participating in a sign-language club. He is a member of the Future Farmers of America (a.k.a. the FFA) and he test-tastes milk for them. He supposedly hunts wolverines in Alaska, and he definitely loves eating tater tots (some of which he prefers to save for later to eat in class.) He lives with his active Grandma (Sandy Martin), his unemployed 32-year-old brother Kip (Aaron Ruell), and their llama Tina. Kip is having an online relationship with a tall, black woman named LaFawnduh Lucas

You shouldn't expect a well-developed plot, a moral to the story, or even a common theme.. unless mundane can be considered so. What you should expect however, is to be warmly entertained, experience moments of reflection back upon your own geekish moments of yester-years, and to gush forth at least a chuckle a minute (which is 82 if you're counting.. GOSH!). Simply put, I loved this film. And since it revolves solely around the characters, so shall this review.

it's not mushy or intellectual, it won't offend anyone, it's just a good, clean story about a geek getting by. And guaranteed, it will give you plenty to laugh about later. And if you're daring, try the ?milk? line on her..

Napoleon seems fairly unaffected by his surrounding. Things like rejections and bullying leave him unmarred as he crawls into a mental fantasy world of unicorns and nun chucks. He's uninvolved and so we the audience feel pretty uninvolved. There's little all that redeeming about Napoleon, he'd be hard to root for

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