GYFF showing Napoleon Dynamite was just the excuse I needed for a rewatch. It wasn’t until it started that I realised, shit I must not have seen this since I first watched it, back in the mid-2000s. I hoped it was as good as I remembered. My trepidation was at least partially founded on the fact the film spawned a boom in loser rom-coms, which leaned progressively more into nerd toxicity, the manic pixie dream girl trope, and geek misogyny – I’m looking at you Scott Pilgrim.
I needn’t worry, Napoleon Dynamite remains a superb piece of comedy. Its straight delivery with Napoleon’s flat, deadpan voice, only raising to whine or sulk – “God!” – is just perfection. The weirdness of the town, the rural backwater where everything is still trying to catch up from 20 years ago, being broke and dressing out of second hand shops so all your clothes are from the 80s. I loved Kip, his soft-spoken effeminate voice as he talks about “chatting with babes online” in what you are sure must be a catfish. With it being so quotable, I forgot just how much of what’s hilarious about the film is the physical comedy, Napoleon running headfirst out of shots, flinging a spatula of leftovers at Tina the llama, Pedro doing some deeply unimpressive “sweet jumps” on his bike.
As I say, later iterations on this kind of style of film became less pleasant, but Napoleon Dynamite is still good clean fun. Deb’s role isn’t to save or redeem or make whole Napoleon. She’s just his friend, even if there is the tingle of something more between them. The film doesn’t end on a kiss but on the two of them playing tetherball. This is a film in which friendship is the goal, the glue that holds everyone together. At the start Napoleon is a complete loner, but by the end, he’s built a little tribe. The sweetness is the sincerity of that, even amongst the lunacy of everything else.
Still a great film.