My Cow Will Devour Your Soul
5:57:00 PM
If I'd realized that Monty Python, aside from being one of my favourite movies, is without a doubt my most "waste of time" movie as well, I would have chosen something else last time. However, I doubt I'd be allowed to use the same movie twice, which is why this time I'm going to talk about Napoleon Dynamite.
"Your current event, Napoleon."
"Last week, Japanese scientists explaced... placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally."
It begins with the opening credits. Yes, this is something to talk about. It's a very long sequence of cafeteria dishes with names written on the actual dish. [Trivia: every single one of these dishes was eaten in different scenes in the movie] When at long last, the opening credits are over, you have Napoleon there, looking totally useless; and the first time you see the movie, if you don' t know what to expect, you wonder why on earth you agreed to go see it in the first place.
...and then everything becomes so pointlessly and originally funny, you don't mind sticking around.
Napoleon Dynamite takes place in a very rural setting. The fim takes its time and is in absolutely no hurry to make any specific point. The plot sort of rolls around in some undefined direction for 82 minutes, and then it ends with you not having gained anything from it except a slightly happier disposition.
It runs for 82 minutes and revolves around a high school loser named Napoleon (Jon Heder). He doesn't seem to know this though. He's a special one. Loves ligers. What's a liger, you ask? "It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic." Oh.
His brother is even more of a loser than Napoleon is; he's 32 years old and stays at home all day, chatting with his online girlfriend, LaFawnduh. "We chat online for, like, two hours every day so I guess you could say things are gettin' pretty serious."
There's a new kid at school and his name's Pedro. He's a man of very few words and even less facial movements, and Napoleon decides later that they're best friends. Pedro tries to ask the most popular girl at school to the dance by, um, building her a cake. She says no. Pedro decides to run for Student Body President. At the last minute, he found out he needed some sort of performance to go with his campaign speech. Now, there was something strangely original about the whole movie, but this really hit it out of the park.
Director Jared Hess played three different songs and had Jon freestyle dance to them before he cut the "best" moves into a sequence for one disco song. In the movie, Napoleon had been learning to dance off a dance tape, "D-Grooves." I don't know how Heder managed to put that together, but the result was brilliant.
Napoleon is essentially useless and when it ends, you wonder what on earth you could have spent those 82 minutes on instead, because you seriously do not learn anything from this movie. However, it's unexpected success doesn't surprise me, because no matter how much I feel like I wasted my life by the end of it, I still can't get enough of it. "Gosh!"
Friday, February 16, 2007
Katrinized.
