Napoleon Dynamite - Like, the Best Special Edition Ever! DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

It's funny, because I'd never heard of this flick before watching this special edition DVD... yeah, right. Napoleon Dynamite opened in the summer of 2004 as just another indie flick, trying to fight its way to a profit from a $400,000 budget. I think some flicks spend that much money on food. Anyway, in those two years, this flick has become such a huge part of popular culture in such a short time, the word "phenomenal" wouldn't at all be out of line in describing its success, and this is easily the Clerks of the 21st century.

It's been quite awhile since I've seen this flick last, and it's still just as much of a treat as it was the first time I watched it. There is such a marvelous cast of characters here, from the wannabe quarterback Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) to the online babe-chatter Kip (Aaron Ruell) to Pedro (Efren Ramirez) to Deb (Tina Majorino) all the way back to the coolest nerd in decades, Napoleon Dynamite, played classicly by Jon Heder.

The thing that irks people the most about this movie is the same reason that I love it: there really isn't a plot here. Sure, there's a story, but this is almost a mockumentary, a little slice of life in Idaho and the quirky people that inhabit the Gem State. While this isn't a Christopher Guest flick at all, it has that sort of feel to it. There is no really huge conflict that pulls the whole thing together, but just a series of smaller events that make up these people's lives, and also makes for some incredibly off-beat humor. They could've easily made this flick about ONLY Pedro's race for president, or ONLY Uncle Rico making a mess out of Napoleon's life, or ONLY Napoleon's quest for a girl. The great thing about this is the husband-and-wife writing team of Jared and Jerusha Hess take all these elements, and more, and weaves them together so efficiently, that you're more than happy to just sit back and see what these odd people will do next. They say the key to any movie is conflict, and while there are plenty here, we don't really have a central one. It's kind of like Pulp Fiction, actually. The front of the script to Pulp Fiction states that the movie is "Three Stories about One Story" and this is kind of what we get here... only a bloodless, Idaho, teenage version of it. It's a mastefully crafted script, and even though I've seen the movie at least 10 times or so now, I still laugh about the loudest laugh I can every time I see the part where Pedro's cousins pull up in the low-rider, with Vote For Pedro painted on the door, and they just shake their head at the bully. It's just one of the funniest things I've ever seen on film, bar-none.

But the marvelous script is just a small part of what drew people to this movie so much. I can go on and on about Jon Heder's Napoleon performance, but it's been said so often that I just don't really feel like saying what everyone else has. He's just brilliant, and I'll leave it at that. But what often goes overlooked is the rest of these awesome characters. There isn't a weak performance in the whole cast, from Haylie Duff's (yes, Hillary Duff's baby sister) snobby little Summer Wheatley character, to Diedrich Bader's moronic karate "master" Rex. Everyone might not have that big of a role, but they all fit their part so well it's almost sick, and that can be credited to the masterful direction of newcomer Jared Hess. This is his feature-film debut here, and I can't think of a stronger first-time debut like this one, that has reached so far from starting out so little, in a very long time, perhaps back to QT's Reservoir Dogs or even the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple. The fact that I'm talking about a little indie shot for $400,000, that was shot in Idaho with a cast of basically no-namers, two years later, on a Special Edition DVD mind you, is quite a feat indeed.

We kick off the features with a great little doc*mentary called World Premiere Jared Hess - A Nonlinear Look at the Director of Napoleon Dynamite. This is a weird little doc*mentary that's just what it says. They start the doc off in Sundance, just before Napoleon is to premiere there, and we see Jared obviously a tad nervous before the first ever audience is about to watch his flick. From there we go all over the place - 20 months before, 20 months after, 30 minutes after, 6 hours before, 3 hours after, all centered on the premiere at Sundance. Though it's mainly centered on Jared, we do see glimpses of Jon Heder, Aaron Ruell and others who are in the flick, but you'll have to look close to recognize them because they don't have a little name thing come up in the doc. That can be a little confusing, but you get the hang of this format fairly quickly, and once this 40-minute flick is over, you'll have a very deep understanding into the background of this flick. Jared tells all sorts of stories on the influences of his characters, certain stories from his childhood that made it into the flick and even where he got the name Napoleon Dynamite from. That part is just hillarious, because you won't see that coming at all. Anyway, they have some great parts in Preston Idaho as well. That is where Jared grew up, where he shot the flick and, 20 months after the premiere, where they had a Napoleon Dynamite Festival in the town. The whole thing is just a blast to watch, even though the nonlinear thing can be a touch annoying.

Next up is another 40-minute doc*mentary entitled On Location: Napoleon Dynamite. In this one, no one is talking into the camera and it's just a fly-on-the-wall kind of thing, taking us into how they shot certain scenes of the movie. You can get a pretty good feel for how tiny their budget was in a few different ways. One, when they're shooting a scene where the bully Randy keeps headlocking Napoleon against his locker, you can see they have about as minimal an amount of extras possible, and there is a part where they talk about blocking out the windows but they don't have the budget to swing the $400 bucks they'd need for an ideal solution. You see a lot of rehearsals here too and you get a really good feel of the anatomy of each scene they display for us here.

Next up is Deleted/Extended Scenes and Outtakes. The deleted/extended scenes aren't really much to look at, but the outtakes at the end of this menu are pretty flippin sweet. Since everyone appears to be almost overdosing on Prozac in the flick, it must have been hard to keep a straight face on the set, and these outtakes prove it. Tina Majorino apparently had the most trouble with this, as she bursts out laughing a split-second after Hess calls "cut" almost every time. It's pretty funny to watch, but there should've been more outtakes and less deleted scenes.

The last few ones are only mildly entertaining. In Casting Napoleon Dynamite they start off with a nice interview with casting director Jory Weitz, where he goes through certain selections, some of which he hand-picked from previous work with them like Jon Gries. It's a fairly short interview, but, like most of the other features, offers a unique perspective on the making of this flick. After that, we have a few Auditions which are just some short readings with some of the supporting cast. Heder was already cast, due to his involvement in Jared's short called Peluca, which I'll talk about shortly. Anyway, we get readings from Tina Majorino, Efren Ramirez and a very short one from Haylie Duff. It's a little bit interesting how Ramirez first interpreted the character, and then how he just nailed it later, but that's about it here.

Next up is Peluca the short that Jared Hess did that was the birth of the Napoleon Dynamite character. It's almost pointless to watch it, though. If you were to see this before seeing Napoleon Dynamite, I'm sure you'd think it was pretty sweet, but the short is almost entirely stuff from the movie or the deleted/extended scenes. There are a few subtle differences, but it's basically all the same ol' song and dance, and the only reason you'd probably want to watch this is to see an early version of the Napoleon character.

This next one should be watched only if you're a HUGE Napoleon Dynamite addict. Napoleon Sightings are just a collecion of clips from other outlets, after the flick took off. They have him as a Random VJ on TRL for the first one, and then it's just a bunch of award show clips, like him playing tetherball with Nicole Ritchie at the Teen Choice Awards and a bunch of other stuff. Sure, the clips aren't that long, but, really, what's the point, eh? The funniest ones, though, are the ones at the end. Heder and Efren Ramirez did three commercials for the Utah State Fair, in character, and they're pretty damn funny. Still, there isn't much here overall.

Lastly, we have a Photo Gallery and the featurette The Wedding of the Century which is a little weird. I think all of the cast went back to Preston Idaho to film the wedding between Kip and LaFawnda. I honestly don't know why they did this, other than to serve for a reunion. Maybe they're saving it up for something, but who knows. It's only a few minutes long, so I guess it's worth watching, but I really am not sure why they included this. Overall, though, these special features only make the Napoleon Dynamite experience that much greater.

The flick is presented in a widescreen letterbox format, enhanced for 16x9 TV's.

You can hear the superb score by John Swihart, as well as the quotable quotes just fine in the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound format.

The copy I received didn't have the red slip-sheet on it, so I really can't talk about that. Sure enough, as much as I complain about those slip-sheets that are exactly the same as the packaging beneath them, this time, I get hosed on one of the few that's different. Just my luck. Anycrap, the front of the keep-case packaging is basically a close-up of the now-famous "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt, that has a bunch of different buttons on it that feature little catch phrases from the flick like "Ligers Rule!" and "Pedro Will Protect" and at the bottom it has a small title card with "Like, the Best Special Edition Ever!" below that. Pretty slick. The back cover has a few more of those buttons in the top left corner, with some Polaroid-like stills from the flick with captions going down below that on the left side. The rest of the back cover has a slick new synopsis, and a "Sweet Features" box that lists all of the special features on both discs (the first disc just has some commentaries, and I hate those, so yeah). It's probably the best packaging I've ever known.... har har.

Love him or hate him, Napoleon Dynamite has imbedded itself into pop culture quicker and deeper than most flicks ever have in such a short time. We just don't see such good-natured, wholesome flicks these days, let alone flicks that are absolutely 100% damn good fun, like we've seen with Napoleon Dynamite. This will surely be a flick that will stand the test of time, so those of you who don't like it will surely have time to come around, and this special edition DVD will be the perfect starter kit for you. But for those many many people who love this flick as much as I do, this will, at the very least, reinforce your opinion, and at the very most, give you a far greater appreciation of why this is one flippin sweet film, no matter how many times you've seen it.