Napoleon Dynamite is a comedy about a misfit teenager named Napoleon Dynamite who goes to high school in a quirky little rural town. Napoleon lives with his grandmother and older brother named Kip. Napoleon's family and friends are weird too. The movie starts off with a typical day in Napoleon's life. He takes the school bus, goes to class, gets bullied by a muscular jock, and eats in the cafeteria. Then one school day, he meets a new student from Mexico named Pedro. Pedro speaks limited English, but he and Napoleon end up as friends who help each other out. Their first challenge: a school dance is coming up. So, Pedro asks a popular girl named Summer — the pretty blonde cheerleader type — but gets rejected. Then Pedro asks a shy girl named Deb, who Napoleon had a crush on. At first Napoleon was a little nonplussed, but eventually he picked a girl named Trisha at random from the school yearbook, and asked her to the dance. Amazingly, she accepted under pressure from her mother to go to the dance. This was despite Trisha being a popular better-looking student than nerdy Napoleon, with his thick glasses, aversion to eye contact, and odd curly hairdo. At the dance, Trisha instantly ditched Napoleon to hang out with the popular kids, and Napoleon and Pedro took turns dancing with Pedro's date, Deb. While Napoleon danced with Deb, Pedro went to the hallway for a drink of water from the fountain. Up on the wall, Pedro saw a poster about the upcoming election for student president. Pedro determined he was up to the challenge and decided to run for president, despite being a new kid with limited English language skills and little popularity. It turned out that the only other candidate for president was Summer, the girl who rejected Pedro's advances earlier in the film. Pedro and Summer battled for votes by handing out buttons and flyers. The final stage of the election was a speech from each candidate in the auditorium in front of the student population. Summer spoke first, and then did a talent portion — a little dance with four cheerleader friends. Then Pedro, a little overwhelmed, spoke awkwardly in a resigned way, and then walked off the stage. But the talent portion was required for all the candidates, and Pedro didn't know he needed a talent performance until just before his speech. Napoleon saw that his buddy was in trouble, so having worked on his dancing recently, Napoleon got on stage and did a solo dance that was completely unexpected in ability. The crowd erupted in applause after he finished dancing - giving us the impression that maybe Pedro could win the election after all. In a nutshell, that was Napoleon's story, but there were other concurrent storylines happening in the film.

One other story line involved Napoleon's diminutive nerdy 30-something unemployed brother, Kip, who met a woman in an Internet chat room. Kip and the woman chatted on the Internet for hours and eventually decided to meet in person in Napoleon's town. They hit it off, and got married at the end of the movie. Another concurrent storyline was that of Napoleon's toupee-wearing Uncle Rico who was asked by Napoleon's grandmother to watch over Napoleon and Kip while she was injured in the hospital. Rico, a good-looking former high school football player, longs for his glory days, wondering how different his life would have been if he had turned pro. Uncle Rico busily does a door-to-door sales thing selling resealable plastic food containers and bust enhancers. Despite earning some income with his sales, he is so dimwitted that he uses his income to buy a supposed time machine on the Internet. The time machine, of course, was a scam. The device didn't do anything at all. Rico was disappointed, but eventually, he reunited with his ex-girlfriend, and all the concurrent storylines concluded in happy endings.

Positives
Unlike a movie such as Revenge of the Nerds (1984), where it was battle between nerds and the cool kids, Napoleon Dynamite was really more about interesting characters in an odd community who struggled to fit in and go about their lives. Napoleon Dynamite was not 'in your face' about any message, which helped make the movie so popular and appealing. Napoleon came off at the end of the film as being universally relatable. The movie was not a high school coming of age movie either. If it were, then only teens would have enjoyed it. Instead, this movie is enjoyable for everyone - young and old. Also, the movie is just plain and simply a comedy - with a whole bunch of funny incidents and gags that everyone can enjoy. Also, the character Napoleon Dynamite was original — with his unsmiling face. He wasn't intentionally unsmiling (as though he were trying to play it cool), nor was he depressed, but rather his unsmiling face conveyed the bland existence that he was in. Then there were the mannerisms that have become memes in popular culture such as, "Lucky," "Sweet," "Idiot," "flippin," and "Gosh," pronounced in only the way that Napoleon Dynamite would.

Sound
The sound quality was good.

Photography
This wasn't a glitzy special effects movie with fantastic scenery. Napoleon Dynamite took place in a rural farming community with dingy school cafeterias, regular homes, drab-colored vans, and farm fields. The movie was a comedy, so visually stunning imagery wasn't as necessary. In fact, the drab scenery and visuals accentuated Napoleon's drab life (he was always sighing in the movie, and maybe longing for a more exciting place to be). The movie was well lit and well photographed. However, the scene where Pedro sat in his bathtub surrounded by lit candles had camera-vibrations, but maybe those imperfections added to the charm of the movie, which was a lower-budget film.

Editing
The editing was appropriate for the movie, and timed well for the funny bits. The editor was Jeremy Coon, who doubled as co-producer.

Directing
The movie was directed well by Jared Hess. With a low-budget film, one can't expect perfection, and perhaps if the film were more faultless it would have been less realistic, less relatable, and therefore less popular. In a way, the low-budget look of the film makes us relate to the working class rural world that Napoleon Dynamite inhabits.

Acting
With a low-budget movie, one can't be too critical of the acting. Several of the extras were supposed to be looking off-camera in some scenes, but they couldn't help looking into the camera. The producers probably didn't have the luxury of better extras. Although he smiled slightly sometimes, Jon Heder was almost always in character as Napoleon Dynamite, and his performance helped make the movie the success it was. There were many other excellent players. One of the better performances of the film was by Jon Gries, the actor who played Napoleon's Uncle Rico. The acting was quite good, and we genuinely felt Uncle Rico's longing for his younger days as a football player - even though his football-playing abilities were more in his own mind than anything else. We also felt Uncle Rico's yearning to make the sale in his door-to-door salesman routine. Another excellent performance was by Aaron Ruell who played Kip, Napoleon's older brother. Kip spoke with a slight lisp combined with a mutter. He was the counterpart to many of the funny moments in the movie that involve Napoleon. Although Napoleon and Kip earnestly playfought as many brothers do, they genuinely seemed to care for each other. Another prime performance was by Tina Majorino, the actress who played Deb, who was Napoleon's girl interest in the film. Deb was trying to save up money for college, and appreciated Napoleon's affection, and eventually became Napoleon's friend. Majorino played Deb's character well, and one could almost call her quirky character 'independent-film-esque.' Majorino, incidentally, portrayed the young girl Enola in Waterworld (1995). Finally, there was Diedrich Bader who played the very serious martial arts instructor named Rex. Bader is better-known as Drew's friend on TV's The Drew Carey Show. Bader convincingly conveyed to his martial arts students the intensity of a serious instructor, and his comedy acting experience helped lift the entire movie's comedic level.

Music
The music was by John Swihart and was well-done. There were several pop music songs used in the film, such as during the high school dance. Otherwise, the rest of the music was as quirky as the movie itself. In some comedy movies, the music announces itself as: "this is comedy music." Yet, the music in Napoleon Dynamite wasn't overtly 'comedy movie music' so it worked out fine. For example, when Napoleon was in a thrift store with his friends, the elevator music playing on the store's loudspeakers was organ type music that was light and slightly uplifting, helping accentuate the comedic moments in the store.

Lukewarms
There was a scene where Napoleon's grandmother rode a quad motorbike in the sand dunes with some friends. The grandmother drove too fast, went over a giant dune, and flew into the air while her motorbike plummeted to the ground. The resulting fall fractured the grandmother's tailbone, sending her to the hospital, which is why Uncle Rico was needed to supervise Napoleon and Kip at home. We learn in the director's DVD commentary that a male motorbike rider was hired as the stuntman during the cutaway scene of the critical jump. Indeed, it looked like a man flying through the air, not a woman, so the scene stood out. The bit was still funny, since we don't normally expect grandmas to speed around on quad bikes.

Favorite Part
Napoleon says to the llamma named Tina, "Tina, eat your food!" The sound the llama makes is so unusual that it's comical. Most people haven't heard or been around real llamas, let alone seen one in a movie, so hearing one was kind of funny. The llama was used once in a while to punctuate the movie with a running gag. From the director's commentary on the DVD, we learn that the family of director and co-writer Jared Hess had several llamas. So to him, llamas were a part of his life, and not that unusual at all. But to the mainstream, non-llama-owning audience, the llamas are a rare sound.

Trivia: The budget for Napoleon Dynamite was US$400,000, and the film made about US$46 million.

Bonus DVD features
The DVD commentary was interesting because we learn that many of the funny incidents in the movie actually happened to the writers when they were growing up as brothers in a large family. For example, when Napoleon dangled a plastic action figure on fishing line out a school bus window and dragged it on a dirt road, the brothers actually did that in real life. A separate DVD bonus feature was a short student film called Peluca which was made before Napoleon Dynamite was filmed. In Peluca, we see the beginnings of the Napoleon Dynamite character (except he wasn't named Napoleon Dynamite yet). Actor Jon Heder formed the same nerdy film character used in Napoleon Dynamite, but the surrounding extras and actors weren't quite as developed as in the later movie. Since Peluca was a student film, they really didn't have much time to get everything as good as they did in Napoleon Dynamite. In Peluca, the black & white film was grainy, but director Hess admitted in the DVD commentary that he didn't develop the film quite right, so that's why it was grainy. Still, it was interesting to see the beginnings of the Napoleon Dynamite character by watching Peluca.

Summary
The feature film Napoleon Dynamite was just plain funny and quirky. Despite a low budget, the film's humor soared above any minor imperfections. In fact, the low-budget look may have helped make the movie so appealing. The personalities were relatable in some way to everyone, and there were enough strong acting performances and curious characters that the film succeeded at being entertaining and funny.