Oh, Jimmy "J.J." Walker, look what passes for "dy-no-mite" these days

reviewed Sun, 11 Jun 2005

I tell you, kids these days, they have no idea.  They see some brainless, synthetic piece of crap like Napoleon Dynamite, and they think it’s the shiznit (do the kids still say “shiznit”?).  “Do the chickens have large talons?” – that’s not a catchphrase.  “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw” – now there was a catchphrase!  (Heathers.  Look it up.)

But Napoleon Dynamite is apparently the sort of witless, unthreatening movie that passes for cult these days.  Its appeal is mystifying – I see “Vote 4 Pedro” graffiti everywhere, and there was that National Spelling Bee contestant who blurted out the aforementioned line (the chicken one, not the chainsaw one).

The movie’s main offense isn’t its 25-year-old “high school” students, or the terminally irritating mannerisms and aggrieved air of the title character, nor even the affectlessness almost all the actors studiously cultivate.  No, its main flaw is that it’s just plain stupid.  The dreadful writing manifests in the one-liners that aren’t funny and in the strained way the movie tries to be cool.  It’s completely inorganic, an obnoxiously self-conscious, Frankensteinian mishmash of “joke-oids.”

Sure, there are a few amusing bits, but when a movie throws this much stuff at you, some of it is bound to stick, just by dumb luck.  But none of it is worth sitting through the movie to see.  So, if like me you wonder what all the fuss is about, just take it from me:  kids these days are crazy.

And not once in the entire damn movie does anyone comment on his name being Napoleon Dynamite!  Does that make his brother Kip -- who I think is played by the same actor who played Trudy's serial-killer boyfriend on Reno 911! -- Kip Dynamite?

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