Movie Review: Napoleon Dynamite

At the Meow, LoneStar Neanderthal mentioned that Napoleon Dynamite could be watched free of charge (via a Russian web site...hmmm...could that have anything to do with the extra cyber-annoyances lately? One never knows what may find one's computer while one is merely watching an old movie...You've been warned). 

I watched it. It has a simple plot, simple enough for high school viewers:

(1) High school is a bore, but what else are you going to do while you're too young to get a job or go to college. So you keep going, even if you're being physically abused there.

(2) Being nice to someone who is new and looks likely to have a worse time than you're having is a good idea.

(3) Exercise solves a lot of problems.

Napoleon Dynamite is a nerd and the son of a nerd. Even worse, he's also the nephew of a jock (who actually spends money on a time machine he buys online, which, when assembled and plugged in as directed, delivers electric shocks to the purchaser...Uncle Rico's best years were in high school and he wanted to go back to 1982 so desperately he'd try anything). The school bully likes to bang his head against his locker door and demand his money. He doesn't have any, when the movie starts, because giving him pocket money was one of the many things his grandmother did, and she's in the hospital as the result of playing stupid childish games with Uncle Rico, a grown man who still spends most of his time throwing balls around the yard. 

The first thing Napoleon does right is be nice to the new boy, who is short, but travels with two college-drop-out types in a snazzy car. After school they see the school bully picking on another boy who's even smaller than they are. New boy George's buddies drive past. George makes a sign. The two older boys look at the bully. Now the bully knows he's being watched, and he ain't no bully no more, at least not where George and Napoleon can see him. 

Napoleon decides that George would make a better class president than the well-connected blonde who dates the bully. Napoleon is still a nerd. George is still short, and still speaks English with an accent. However, Napoleon figures high school boys will vote for someone who can offer them protection.

He works on self-improvement. He draws cartoons that seem unlikely to impress anybody, but as the girl he's chosen to invite to a school dance doesn't have any other invitations she goes with him.  He practices dancing with videos. He and his father take a martial arts course. He even tries handing out campaign flyers with George. Even though the blonde's idea of a campaign is "Vote for Summer! It'll be Summer all the time!", people do at least take her folders. People walk past the boys, embarrassed for them. 

Meanwhile, Uncle Rico's ideas for ways he and Mr. Dynamite can earn some money go from bad to worse. They start peddling dishes that are carefully not labelled Tupperware. That doesn't work; in their neighborhood anybody who'd consider plastic dishes already has them. When Uncle Rico tries to sell some girls from school a product advertised with flyers headed "BUST LUST," Napoleon knows he has to step in, or the police will. He tells Rico to move out of their house. Rico won't move without a fight; he knocks Napoleon down. Napoleon has learned some things to do to guys who knock him down. Rico moves out.

Before the election, each candidate is prepared to make a speech. They've apparently not heard the part about being asked to follow the speech with a "skit." Summer gabbles out an inane speech, then does a dance with the rest of the cheerleading squad that leaves the boys in the audience speechless. Between that and the thought of a "skit," George can barely mumble "I'm George. Vote for me." Napoleon does the dance he's been practicing at home and gets a standing ovation...

It was fun. Who's afraid of remembering high school? But I'm posting this review mostly because I'm curious whether anyone else watched the movie, or others on the same site, and subsequently had more than the usual amount of cyber-harassment. (I don't mean personal harassment. I mean "security" ware constantly slowing down or crashing your computer.)