VOTE FOR PEDRO

 

The most influential movie of my middle school experience--Napoleon Dynamite.  It was the go-to sleepover watch in my friend group (we called ourselves the Casual Tacos, had claim over the lunch table in the back corner of the cafeteria, and would skip recess to gossip in the empty band room--"I never had any friends later on like the ones when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?"). We could recite the film like a thespian studying Shakespeare. The DVD copy rotated between houses--I don't remember who was its actual owner, but that DVD traveled our small town more than any adventurer had across the globe.  Our appreciation of the film even extended to a few of us getting to meet Jon Heder at Hollywood Palms (I never tell this story though because I was a painfully shy middle schooler. Though I met him nearly 10 years ago, the memory of the encounter keeps me up at night. I was shy and embarrassing).  

The excessive consumption of Napoleon Dynamite led to an eventual disinterest in watching it.  I don't think I've seen the movie since I was 14.  An overcast day in my senior year of college, aimlessly scrolling through Hulu, led me back to it.  

It's strange to watch the film after so many years. I remember every bit of it, every little line my friends and I used to quote, the silly little things we would point out (even remembering the exact scene my old friend Alyssa meekly mentioned she thought Uncle Rico was kind of cute and the immediate chorus of ew! what the hell?!! she received from the rest of us). 

There's something so familiar about Napoleon Dynamite, and it's not just the middle school remembrance. The film itself is an exaggerated slice-of-life. The whole of the film is recognizable--though taking place in rural Idaho--its plot and experience is relatable. It contains bits-and-pieces of middle America: brown paneled walls, grandmother-quilted couches, middle-aged men living in their past, door-to-door con artists, the angst and awkwardness of high school.  

Napoleon Dynamite is chock full of cinematic merit.  The beginning shots of the film are question and response--literally. Someone asks a question, the next shot is the answer.  There is just as much said in its shots as its dialogue.  

Even something as silly as Napoleon running down the deserted Idahoan streets to meet up with his date to the dance has such a cinematic brilliance.  It parallels to River Phoenix standing in the open roads of My Own Private Idaho just 14 years earlier.  Though, true to the film, the aesthetic is interrupted by a moment of humor.  On just a $400,000 budget, the beauty of Napoleon Dynamite manages to surpass that of films with triple its allotment.