Napoleon Dynomite
(2004, Jared Hess, USA) [50 out of 100]
I really wanted to like this film and I think I did - didn't I? - Who the hell knows!
-July 25, 2004
Right from the start you can see Jared Hess' aching desire to be considered a "true" Indie filmmaker, full of all the slacker angst and fuck-you bruvara that has usually been associated with the early films of just about any one of the maverick independant filmmakers that began bludgeoning the American Cinematic scene in the early nineties (Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, et al) but have since gone pseudo-mainstream, and because of this intense "indie" passion, Hess has created Napoleon Dynomite from the Jim Jarmusch-Todd Solondz school of filmmaking. Unfortunately, Hess has managed to do this without much of the artistic talent that normally accompanies either Jarmusch or Solondz.
Not well done but not poorly done either, Napoleon ends up being a deadpan cerebral farce that sporatically falls into a time-perfect surreal comedy of errors...and errors and errors. Sometimes the errors belong to the hapless title character - the uber-nerd - but sometimes the errors belong to the somewhat hapless director as well.
Desiring to be the consumate "Indie-boy", Hess has made his film devoid of most of the things that make a film work on a literal and/or lateral level but also ends up lacking those things that make a film work on an esoteric level - such as a witty script or a touch of original thinking. There are some bright spots in here that work - and work damn well - but there are others that merely seem like a retreading of the rest of American Independant Cinema.