MotW: Napoleon Dynamite

When I was in school teachers would show us the movie Donnie Darko, nowadays teachers show Napoleon Dynamite, times change.

I would say this movie was the first time I experienced memes. The only difference with today memes is that people would share them face to face speaking, like the sound effects from Napoleon, or saying things like vote for Pedro.

I remember everyone in school would know these memes. Nowadays memes are passed virtually, and they are not as fun as people randomly saying them to each other in real person.

Yeah, I don't remember liking it either, but for some reason it connected with a lot of people at the time. I just thought that maybe I wasn't adjusted to that kind of humor myself because I didn't quite get what was funny about it. Maybe if I watch it again nowadays it would be different, but I do admit the memes were funny to me just because it was funny seeing people doing them. If I remember correctly they did a choreography on a Backstreet Boys song which just a few years earlier was the biggest band on the planet, but when this movie came out they were a thing of the past, and referencing to them was a new movement for basically any event, not just the movie, but in real life, like proms, weddings, and it any party really. In fact there was a Backstreet Boys act on our prom as well, and everyone liked those.

Since the american midwest is one of the shittiest places on earth, I figured it is appropriate to discuss one of the shittiest comedies of all time in honor of the harvest months: Napoleon Dynamite.

...actually, it takes place in Idaho, which technically is a western state, but I don't care because the political climate, economics and society are basically the same as midwestern shitholes like Iowa and Nebraska. Idaho is just another midwestern state for most americans like me. In addition to having the most conservative politics of just about any US state, Idaho has the midwestern trademark of being full of nothing but rednecks and dreary, vapid, agricultural sprawl, a perfect setting for a shitty teenage comedy.

Napoleon Dynamite is one of the laziest, lamest comedies I have ever seen. It would actually be a good movie if the characterization wasn't so 2-dimensional, the acting so sleepy, the script so empty, etc. I mean, it manages to capture many of the classic tropes associated with the midwest, like toxic masculinity, redneck culture, gun culture, and others, so it should be worth seeing for nailing that stuff. But the movie is far too shitty to be worth seeing even for midwest haters like myself.

Mainstream moviegoers loved this film, and all my peers at school wouldn't shut up about it, but even as a kid I was smart enough to see it as the lazy piece of shit that it is. I knew the assholes behind this stinker had no real talent, and once their next disaster hit theaters...




...everybody was suddenly in agreement that Jared Hess was a talentless, unfunny loser all along.

I've had more fun laughing at the midwest itself than Napoleon Dynamite or any of Jared Hess's other garbage. I mean, it's not like the midwest even needs filmakers to make a mockery out of it; it does that itself. With that said, I would love a good mockery of the midwest, but unfortunately Napoleon Dynamite isn't it. 1/5

Is that Emma Roberts?

She reminds me of that girl from Blow.