Midweek Mention... Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite

Reegs: There was a kid at my school

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: glasses.

Sidey: Yeah, probably

Dan: few nerds? one of them, agreed. We had some special cases year,

Sidey: think. We had some special cases in our year, I'd say. Yeah.

Reegs: people, sort of social misfits, a bit unusual.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: How were they treated at your school? Were they all kind of embraced with the

Sidey: Some were just completely ignored, I would say. And others

Reegs: were embraced for their craziness.

Yeah.

Dan: Okay, but there isn't any kind

Sidey: I wouldn't say that we had like a particular bullying problem per se.

Reegs: No.

Dan: Not towards the people, the outliers, maybe. That's

Sidey: But I don't think anyone necessarily comes close to the subject of this week's

Dan: Well, Napoleon Bonaparte

Sidey: Doesn't.

Dan: Isn't. what this is. This is Napoleon Dynamite. which is different.

Sidey: And this is your first time with it,

Dan: this was my first time watching this and I wouldn't

Class him

as like a nerd. Is in like nerds that know stuff. This is just a guy who seems to be just socially And he's got just a, I dunno, a weird, strange way about him.

It's not, it's not nasty. There's not a nasty bone in his body really. He's just a little bit confused and lost. You've all seen this before?

Cris: i've never seen this

Dan: before. It was your first time?

Reegs: You aware of it though? Because it's been memed into oblivion, hasn't

Dan: it because it just seemed the kind of thing that I would never enjoy and watch.

It was like, I think I'd given it a go before, but maybe caught it late and

Sidey: It starts off, the credits are shown in different meals, aren't they? Yeah. Put down over some white stripes. I was thinking, oh yeah, the soundtrack is really good. And I was watching it. It's like, I know it's really sparse. It's like

Reegs: like, I know

it's

Sidey: Yeah. And then

Reegs: like, Yeah, there's barely anything in it,

Sidey: Yes. Right. Yeah. But we've pretty much introduced to Napoleon straight away. Aren't we?

Yeah. Getting onto the school

Reegs: He's like stood gormlessly, just, you know, just straight away. When you look at him, like he's so beautifully observed the hair, like big in and sort of unkempt and the massive glasses. And he's got an expression on

Sidey: His eyes are almost ha more than half closed. Yeah. Yeah. He is like, he is almost like, like the, the mighty bush,

Dan: He's got, yeah, he's got glasses on and it's then difficult to see clearly. Through the glare, sometimes his eyes.

But anytime you do see him, you think he, he's close. His eyes are just close. He's talking and

Reegs: He gets on the school bus and takes his God,

Sidey: performance He gets on the school bus and

Reegs: got! And he

Sidey: God, whatever, whatever I want to, gosh And he gets out it's like a He Man figurine Which he's tied some fishing line onto Yeah And he sort of discreetly opens the window as if, you know, it's forbidden and tosses it out. And then we just watch it bounce along the road while he's staring at it.

Reegs: Yeah, the kid's almost, like, half his

Sidey: Yeah, the kid talking to him looks like half his

Reegs: he's

getting on a school bus with all these kids and all this stuff, I dunno, yeah.

Sidey: Because I was thinking that when we then see him in the classroom, it

seemed like A varied age group, I would say.

It wasn't like, you know, when we were at school and everyone, you know, you're in year groups based on

Reegs: Where he's in

Sidey: I took it to mean that this was just a small town and they just had to have a school and whoever was young was at

Dan: In and around that

Reegs: that. It's like this sleepy town in the middle of nowhere. You see him playing tetherball. I think it is on his route, like hitting it like pathetically as it

Dan: He's just so socially awkward.

Reegs: and he's getting bullied.

There's like, they're taking the Mickey out of him. The, the sort of local jock. He said, what did you do this? I spent the summer with my uncle in Alaska hunting Wolverines. It's not a lot of plot to this movie, so it's going to be like, you know, it's A lot of it is about a search for connection,

Dan: Search for connection. You've got a few undercurrents of potential girl action, potential friendship with a guy who's running for class president and how he is helping with that

Sidey: Well, first, first of all, we, we kind of meet. his family, don't we? And get to learn a little bit. It's never really expanded upon, but there's no parents.

He lives with his grandmother. And She

Reegs: seems to be a lesbian, right? She's got really short

Sidey: and

Reegs: she goes off with her aunt on

Sidey: she's, she's going away. And,

Dan: on biking holidays. Yeah.

Sidey: And Kip, who is his older brother,

Reegs: He's at least twice his

Sidey: is

not, Responsible enough, so they have to get in Uncle Rico, who

Reegs: he describes himself as a cage fighter, doesn't he? And, and he, right. He talks very straight away openly about his commitment to his online girlfriend, Lafonda, which when you're watching this the first time with no context, you're absolutely convinced he's being catfished completely convinced.

But yeah, so yeah, the plot does kick into gear. He's met, he does meet Pedro. He meets Deb. Deb comes by the, his sort of friend slash love interest selling

Sidey: She's doing beauty shots, glamour shots she calls them, and for today only they're 75 percent off. And she also has these, those really biff, like, Bracelet things that she's hand crafted and she's like entrepreneur.

She said she's trying to raise money for college.

Reegs: Your mum goes to college, Kip says, and she runs off, like, crying. So funny.

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: Yeah there's some really bad banter and

Sidey: But we should talk a bit about Kip because it does play. It's important for the like the visual gag later on. Yeah. Is that he is so scrawny.

Yes. Pitiful and his outfits are terrible, but he kind of rules the roost over Napoleon on the basis that he's older But he's so pathetic He's got braces. He actually had real braces put on for this film and his all the outfits are incredible, but really biff and He's, because we get a scene of Rex Kwando.

Yeah. Where he's trying to learn martial arts and it's just this absolute lunatic in a, He calls it a dojo, but it's

Reegs: Diedrich Bader, I think is the guy's name. We saw him as something else. It's just amazing. Break the wrist, walk away. Break the wrist.

Dan: He's

Reegs: And he's wearing those

cheap

Dan: tracksuit on with an American flag bandana.

Reegs: Yeah. He meets a sort of also kindred spirit, I guess, because he's an, an outsider 2 in Pedro. And they bond over their mutual love of the bike, Sledgehammers. And he takes him out and does like this little, Like this nice little ramp that goes off on his bike and Napoleon is wild. I remember this bit so strongly from the train, He's like, you got three feet of air that time, whatever.

Then it's Napoleon's go and,

Sidey: so I watched this a few times and it does look like he crashes into something.

Reegs: so I read that. That is what, it wasn't set up for that to happen. That is what I read. I dunno, it's almost too, you know, it was one of the central gags of the trailer as well.

Yeah, I remember that.

Dan: Often is though isn't it? Like they're just the stuff that happens anyway or the bloopers and you think I actually that's better

Reegs: yeah,

Dan: we've

Sidey: better than we've actually written it.

Barely kind of harmonious and then we get the introduction of Uncle Rico. Yeah, and this is where things start to get a bit

Dan: Well, grandma's gone away. So she's called in Uncle

Rico

Sidey: says She says we're out of steaks, but don't worry Lyle's gonna come over and sort it out and you're like what it just executes a cow in front of a school

Reegs: front of the school buses. Yeah.

They're all screaming. It's great.

Sidey: Uncle Rico.

He's like really seedy and weird

Reegs: He's trapped in sort of 1982 when he was a high school quarterback jock, had the world in the palm of his hand. He videotapes himself, he videotapes himself like faking and throwing a

Dan: Yeah, he's still, he's still living his high school years where he could have been All State or could have won the state or whatever.

Reegs: It's John Grease and he's wearing this ridiculous wig as

well.

Dan: And that's it. If the coach had put me in, she'd think, You There's at least one or two players better than you.

Sidey: You weren't

Dan: he

Sidey: starting

Dan: even start. You're way off, but it's all he can think about 30 years after the event. And yeah, he's set then to look after the boys who don't really accept his authority on, on any level other than the fact that he is just kind of there.

And he, he, This video that he's made at one point he's just sat,

Sidey: Making them watch

Dan: making them watch it and they're like They're kind of interested, which is just so sad because there's nothing going on.

Reegs: it the worst video he's

ever

Sidey: seen. Ever made.

Reegs: made. Ever made, yeah.

Dan: But then, but then his brother kind of goes, yeah, I guess it's all right. It's pretty cool, like, because

Reegs: they're a bit

Dan: a bit jealous themselves.

They would like to do, make their own video and be on TV. I mean, that's it.

Reegs: And little ships from when he, when he goes to sell it, I really like this moment where she gives her husband the Tupperware and he's like, Oh, try and break it. And he can't, and she's looking at him like, why can't you break, like, so disappointed in

Dan: And then it falls from that where they go, Wow, it's so strong this Tupperware to Kip.

Obviously having this same conversation with another customer and said look you can even run over it in my van And then he reverses over it just smashing into a million pieces. He just drives off. He thinks it's numb I've got not any sales here. But yeah, it was lots of kind of

Sidey: yeah

Dan: Put together bits like this

Sidey: Kip is spending his evenings online chatting to babes. Yeah, in particular lafawnda his his online squeeze which Rico has this idea is that, oh, well, you're on, you're online. Have, you know, you're sort of tech savvy in his eyes. Have you ever looked into time travel?

It's

Dan: yeah. yeah. Already done that,

Sidey: And so like a little bit later on, Napoleon turns up at the house and there's this like weird contraptions, obviously a complete, of course it is a complete scam. But Kip convinces Napoleon to have a go. Essentially just seems to be some sort of electrode,

Dan: Yeah, it is

a

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: you hold on to the bar of the tea and you put this thing between your legs and then they, wait, I've got to put the crystals in

Reegs: in. And they

Sidey: and fire it up and it just electrocutes him

Dan: he electro gives, gives him a, a kind of a lot of pain in a bit of a. But then you see uncle kind of going, yeah, did the same to me. And you can see him just walking and struggling. So these two idiots have both tried this contraption, this electrocuted their balls to try to go into the future.

Reegs: the plot such as it is.

I mean, there are a couple of notable events. There's a dance in which, so the Napoleon needs to make himself more attractive, attractive. So him and Pedro, they need to get skills. So him and Pedro into the future farmers of America competition.

Sidey: yeah. And they're also looking for dates.

Yeah. And so, Pedro. Decides to ask basically like the widely accepted to be the hottest girl in school and she's just

Reegs: she's

Dan: Yeah,

And and he does and

Sidey: it's just a flat no but rico stitches up napoleon by going In one of his sales pitches, it's it's summer's friend, isn't it? And gives this sob story to the mother about how napoleon still wets the bed and all this now He's like completely pathetic and she takes pitch on him and says to her daughter.

You are fucking taking her Yeah he's gonna call and you are gonna say

Dan: You are going to

Sidey: fucking

Dan: Well Pedro's, Pedro's taken Napoleon's bed. like this girl that seems to be quite keen on him as well and she sits next to him and they, they eat lunch together and everything, don't they?

And Pedro then has gone and asked her to the dance and you can see Napoleon's a little bit put out by this. He's like, oh, who am I going to go with now? And yeah.

Reegs: love it when he goes to talk to her first. She's got like a huge blob

Sidey: mail moving on the top of her

Reegs: Yeah

Dan: there's lots of little parts. So there's loads of just awkward silences and pauses and really kind of cringy comments and, and just

Sidey: It's him grunting and stuff, he's He fancies himself as a bit of an artist who does these pencil sketches and he does one for the girl, I can't remember her name, who he's going to take and it's an abomination. It's like an appalling caricature and he

Reegs: an appalling caricature. She's got the head

Dan: got the head of her in like a griffin or

Sidey: to do the shading on your upper lip.

Reegs: Yeah

Sidey: thanks

Dan: yeah, thanks for that. And he's really doesn't read between the lines or on any of it. So he just takes it all at face value. If you say, Oh, that's really nice. Even sarcastically, he's just going to go away with, Oh, that's so, Pedro has put his name forward to be class president up against

Sidey: think it's after he gets shot down doesn't he?

He's just sort of stood looking at the water fountain and he looks up and there's the the class president thing He's like, oh fuck it. I'll have a go at that I love it as well because there's you know It's obviously not going very well. Summer is the other candidate and she's giving out, you know, flirting with everyone and giving vote for Summer, vote for Summer.

And Pedro just stood like inanimately in the hallway doing nothing.

Napoleon sees some kid getting bullied. He's kind of getting choked or, you know, in a headlock and just sort of pushed around. When it finished, he walks up to the lad and he goes, it's okay. Pedro offers you his protection. I fucking

Dan: his

Sidey: so good because then next time someone's getting pushed around, these two guys are fucking low

Reegs: gangbangers.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: someone's getting pushed on, these two guys are fucking

Reegs: Yeah, back from the date,

Dan: Be a back back from a a a terrible kind of date episode and these two like latino

Sidey: absolute

Dan: Absolute gangbangers have picked him up and he goes. Oh, do you know pedro and it turns out they do They're his cousins and he's used them now as

Sidey: Anyone's getting hassled at school.

Dan: for the nerds.

So

Reegs: it's like the two guys are breaking bad. I've wondered in like as menacing as

Sidey: They've always got this tricked out car, you know, which could do the hydraulics and it's got, they've had it painted on the fucking paint job. Vote for page

Dan: Yeah, and then they've, they're shaking their head as this one bully's trying to tear a bike off a nerd, and they just he's like, Oh fuck, that's not gonna happen again. And they're like, you've got the projection of Pedro.

And, and Pedro yeah, he starts to kind of get in a Yeah. he gets, He gets

called into the office because he's made a caricature piñata of,

Reegs: Yeah, it's an effigy, isn't it, and they've beaten the shit out of it, and you're like, you're not allowed to do

Dan: you, you can't do that, you can't do that.

And it comes to the day of the vote, so they're in the

Sidey: Well, first of all because they're obviously poor, there's a, there's a poverty thing. We see it with the jobs they have to do and whatever. And Napoleon goes to pick some stuff up at the thrift store. It was often

Reegs: thrift store

Sidey: Yeah, or the He goes to up

And he sees a video. And it's called jay kwan's dance something or other. I can't remember and we just get to see him watching it in his room with the door just slightly John. You could just see him like bopping around and

Dan: So so he's

Reegs: And also, meanwhile, La Fonda has turned up as well. She arrives, cause

Sidey: is, it has been set

Reegs: her from the waist down, has he?

Sidey: says, so I'm kind of bummed 'cause she's never given me a full body shot.

Reegs: of TO'd.

Dan: shot.

Yeah. And that, yeah, yeah. there's so this is some internet girl that he's picked up that everybody's just assuming is not real. And if she

Reegs: Which she turns up, and she's this like, really glamorous black lady,

Sidey: he's a tiny little, he's a tiny little scrawny little white dude.

Dan: she's like

Sidey: big tall,

Dan: 5'5 and she's got big lips and sort of big personality and she's coming out at him, and he's just totally smitten right from the off.

And they both are,

Sidey: yeah she's relative she gives him a medallion

yeah Yeah,

Dan: she gives

Sidey: so there's there's just like

Reegs: just a

Sidey: there's there's just a couple of like callbacks to him and every time he's got more and more black yeah he's got a do rag

Reegs: got a do rag.

Dan: And this kind of chain though, it's almost like, you're my daddy now, like, you know, she's giving him this big

Reegs: She also,

so she's instrumental in it because she gives Napoleon a mixtape as well. So that also helps inspire him to this next bit, which is the, the run for the class presidency.

It's like Sparkle Motion a little bit with what she has to do. It's Summer, Summer goes up first and gives her a little speech. I can't remember what

Sidey: what she Oh, she just promises more vending machines and some

Dan: some promises,

Reegs: privileges for the cheerleaders, I

Sidey: think.

Dan: And they've also got a, a, a little skit to do. And and for her,

Reegs: people that have been in the happy hands.

'cause we'd had that moment with the Dove earlier, with Napoleon

Dan: So yeah, all her cheerleading friends are involved and they're giving it a, you know, give us an S, give us a U, give us a M, M, E, R, summer.

Yeah. And it's all brilliant. It's all coordinated. And Napoleon and Pedro just looking at this, having just learned they need to do a skit. They thought it was just go up there and say, Hi, I'm Pedro, and vote for Pedro. What's the

Reegs: them? The world, or I'll give you everything. Your

Sidey: promised if you vote for me all your dreams will come true

Dan: Yeah which is the one line he goes up and delivers, and then he comes off knowing that he doesn't have a skit. He

does

Reegs: seem like the person least likely to deliver your dreams, doesn't he when

Dan: Yeah, and no real kind of enthusiasm in his voice when he gives that promise.

But Napoleon is taking on himself to be like campaign manager, vote for Pedro, vote for Pedro.

And he needs to fill in now five minutes. So he hands over the mixtape to the sound recording guy. And as Pedro goes off the stage, having given up on his chance to become class president, Napoleon goes on and does the most amazing performance.

Reegs: get the opening bars of Canned Heat,

Sidey: It's the only acceptable use of Jamiroquai ever.

Reegs: Yeah. And he starts with his sort of hands in his pockets, doesn't he? And then he starts moving along to the beat. And then suddenly he's kind of got these moves that he's pretty good.

Dan: And you realise, wait a minute, he has learnt move from move from that, that tape, everything. And it's a five minute song, at least, isn't it?

And to keep pumping out the, the moves for five minutes solid.

Reegs: Well, in fact, I mean he does the whole thing and then it just stops while he's dancing and then he just looks And then scuttles because he's got this amazing way of running that like head down Scuttle thing that is so again, like one of those things you've seen people do

Sidey: Yeah, It's like his hands don't move and he just runs off. It's weird. And, and there's a pause and the audience is just frozen. You don't know what the reaction is going to be. And then they erupt in their

standing ovation. Summer and her idiot jock boyfriend are

Dan: idiot boyfriend. And next thing it kind of cuts to the, that barbecue and they're having a bite to eat and all the, you know, the, the gang members are there, aren't

Sidey: Yes, congratulations, El Presidente!

Dan: on presidency. And he's like, yeah, yeah. He's suddenly risen through the ranks, isn't he? He's like.

Sidey: haven't even mentioned it, but he'd started to panic and was complaining about being hot, so he'd shaved his head, and then he was regretting it, so Dev had put this like, comical wig on him.

So he's there as like, president, with this fucking crazy wig on his head. Yeah.

Dan: And and as you said, rigs not really a plot not really anything that was gonna Resolve itself from the beginning to the end.

There was just lots of little bits of story. It's it's down to

Sidey: what does resolve itself is that Rico had been an arsehole and he, he had been selling these herbal breast enlargement supplements and he had gone to Deb and said, Oh, you should take these.

Inferring that Napoleon would like her to take them. And she phones Napoleon and says, you're a shallow friend and falls out with him. And over the course of this moment, she's the first one that stands up and does the standing ovation after the dance. And the final bit is them playing that tetherball thing and him just smacking it

Reegs: it really hard.

Sidey: sending

Dan: sending it round and round and round.

Sidey: bass is what he says to her. bring it in about that search

Reegs: And pretty funny as well. I tried to think if there was some other meaning in there because like a lot of the time Napoleon's head is in the clouds, you know, he talks constantly about bo staffs and ligers and,

Sidey: His model girlfriend.

Reegs: yeah, fantasy stuff like that. But then when it comes down to it, he does actually pull it off in a big moment.

He has been practicing and doing something. Uncle Rico still trapped in the past and still talking bullshit. So yeah. Okay. Counterpoint of little myth, you know approaches world views, but mostly just really funny

Dan: Yeah, this was one that I'm really pleased that I did get round to watch in the end. And it kind of makes me think, well, why didn't I watch it earlier? But it wasn't an instantly appealing film to me.

A bit like Team America wasn't, you know, just some stuff you've just feel. I'm not going to find that funny. It's not going to be my kind of thing. Actually. Investing a little bit of time and, and giving it a go I'm really pleased I did because this, this had more than a few LOLs.

Cris: This is the worst thing I've

Sidey: seen in my life. Honestly,

Cris: Honestly, last year I couldn't see for two weeks. It's the only time in my life where I wish I couldn't see.

is, I can't even explain how bad this is. This is the most terrible thing I've ever seen in my life. It's fucking shit.

Sidey: life.

it's

Reegs: hate

Cris: I hate everything about it from the first thing.

Everything is fake. I can't believe the acting you say is good. It's fucking shit. That thing is fake. The, the bicycle thing. I could see it a mile away. I couldn't even bear myself to watch the whole thing. I just, I went on my phone and I just kind of listened to it because there's absolutely no point

Reegs: I think if you don't get the humor in it, a comedy is

Cris: There is no humor.

Reegs: thing, isn't it? There

Cris: There is no humor. If this is a comedy, then I'm Napoleon, the real one.

Sidey: I know, I know what you mean. Because if you don't like it, it's one, it's one note,

Reegs: You don't like it

Sidey: so if you don't like it at the start, there's nothing going to

Dan: I agree with Chris. This is shit

Reegs: Chris, is shit.

That's why

Cris: That's why I didn't even wanna I made a point of not saying a word. And I'll save myself till the end where I'm gonna have a rant because it's so shit that whoever wants to watch this, do it on your own peril.

I've got and, and hopefully, hopefully it's an indie classic comedy cult following it's fucking shit.

So there you

Sidey: know, it was made for 400, 000 US.

John Heder, are we saying Heder? Heder? Heder?

Reegs: Yes. Hedla. We are.

Sidey: he was only paid 1, 000 to play Napoleon Dynamite. Yeah, I

Cris: thousand

Reegs: He never hit these, I mean, I don't think anybody really hit these heights again, did

Sidey: I did like Blades of Glory with him in it but I don't think he's ever been able to escape this character.

I mean, it's just too good. But what do you think it did at the box? Do you think it made money

Dan: it made money, for

Reegs: have

Dan: Yeah, from four hundred

Sidey: 46 million dollars. That's that's a good return. That's a good return.

Dan: return. That's not funny.

That's big

Sidey: It also features one of the longest credited cast lists in movie history. Really? Because they credited all 181 student extras. So there you go.

Reegs: Did you watch the post credits scene? Marvel wishes they had a post credits scene as good as this.

Sidey: I didn't this time, but I have seen it before. I just can't remember.

Reegs: It's the wedding of LaFonda and Kip. Like LaFonda's relatives, like, visibly sobbing. In the it's outside. And,

Dan: Visibly sobbing upset that they've married, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: Notably, Napoleon isn't there as they exchange the vows. But he does turn up on a horse that he's trained for the occasion, but he's doing that gormless thing as he rides across the

Dan: Amazing, Amazing.

No, I didn't watch that see that last bit, but

Sidey: can watch it again later on

Dan: We we should watch the credits.

Reegs: up for that, wouldn't you?

Dan: is up for it. Strong recommend over here Yeah,

Sidey: Strong, yeah.

Cris: Yeah, very strong.