I love the anti-hero. I love almost everything about the anti-hero, because I think it's one of the most original things that you can put on screen. For instance, look at characters who rape, murder, pillage, and use naughty language like Alex DeLarge or Patrick Bateman, these detestable characters, but at the same time, they have these funny characteristics that are almost disguised as redeeming qualities. Some anti-heroes can just be egomaniacal dickheads, yet hopeless romantic comedians like Max Fischer from “Rushmore.” We love these people. It shows that you can take the most unlikable of a character, dissect them, take out there organs, look deep into their spleen, and lo and behold there's something loveable.

But, everything that exists in life can go wrong. I love tuna sandwiches, but if some sadist comes along and decides to secretly put pickle relish on it, then I will be in the bathroom puking up so bad that the whole existence of tuna fish and its meaning to my life will be questioned. Only for a moment, though. I got some tuna in the fridge right now as we speak. It's time we made up. On how that relates to the anti-hero or the detestable character, really the only time I get angered is when I think that I'm the only person who knows that the character in question is detestable or unlikable. "Napoleon Dynamite" revolves a lot around high school life. It doesn't pass to the sophomore year.

The character of Napoleon Dynamite is certainly disliked by everyone else in the movie. He gets yelled at and picked persistently by certain members of his family and shoved around in school. He's a character who makes Louis Skolnick look like Vincent Vega. I guess I and the audience are supposed to feel bad for Napoleon and show a little love for him because he is so mistreated by all of these people, but I'm not falling for it. I don't think he gets mistreated because he is a geekshow. I think he gets mistreated because he is a jerk. This is the kind of guy who goes up to a girl drinking 1% milk and asks her "do you think you're fat or something?" The tone in his voice doesn't suggest he thinks that it is some smoothe pick up line, but that it is an odd way for him to put this person down. Oddly it works for him, but not for me. I think the girl is supposed to be his love interest. I'm not too sure. She's one of those attractive girls who I guess is supposed to be homely because her hair is in a pigtail. I thought most movies got over that cliché a while back. Maybe I was wrong.

This is one of the only movies that I can think of that doesn't have a single point to it in any one of its frames. I even found a point in "Nail Gun Massacre," possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. The point was to insult the intelligence of 80's slasher fans. It worked. I cannot see any reason for "Napoleon Dynamite" to be made into a movie. There are scenes in here that might work in other movies, for instance I'm sure someone could do something with the scene where a bus load of kids witness a cow being shot in the head, but when it's tacked in there with Napoleon walking outside, it doesn't work. The same goes for a scene of Napoleon tying a doll to a string and dragging it along the road while riding in a bus. Other scenes just wouldn't work period, like any scene in this movie involving chickens. Not even if they were shot by Orson Welles. Especially now.

There really is no story in the movie. If ever you needed a movie to proove my theory that every movie has a plot, but not every movie has a story, than this is it. It's a lot of weird situations all revolving around the high school life of Napoleon. The wardrobe, the vehicles, the hairstyles, the prom scene, and some of the music would suggest that this takes place in the 80s, but there's a scenes with the internet and a boy band song, so I think this takes place in the year 2004 to the 1986th power.

Napoleon lives with his much older brother and his grandma, who loves her llama. I'm guessing they're happy; I have no reason to think otherwise since every single character in this movie goes about with the same monotone voice and blank expression. It's a movie where every character is impersonating my 7th grade teacher. Guess what, I slept through most of 7th grade. The grandma has to go away for a little bit due to an accident with a dune buggy, leaving Napoleon and his brother in the care of Uncle Rico. Just when I thought no one could get more unlikable than Napoleon, his uncle shows up. He’s a man so unlikable and hateful that I personally cannot see any clue that it was the intent of the writer and director to make this character likeably humorous.

Napoleon gets a job at a poultry farm where we get one particularly useless scene where he has to test out different types of milk. It’s one of the many scenes in the film that has no payoff whatsoever. He drinks the milk, guesses the flavor, and that’s it. In the meantime, he makes friends with another student named Pedro, and somewhere in between this 80 minute film, a popular girl goes to the prom with Napoleon because he drew a picture of her. I'm not exactly sure how that all came about, it all seemed a little far fetched to me. If I drew a picture of the most popular girl at my high school, she would have hugged me...but if I was a nerd, she would have shoved it down my throat and gotten her jock friends to dispose of my shattered body. There's also some weird mix up involving Napoleon's feelings towards his love interest's breasts due to his uncles door to door breast enlargement company. It tries to settle on a tone later on with Pedro running for class president, but that comes way too late into the film for it to be at all redeemable. Once the credits start rolling we realize that nothing has really happened in this film. The students loved it when Napoleon disco danced on stage, but were they laughing with him or at him? Well, later on he's playing tetherball all alone, so I'm willing to think it's the latter. Wait, I forgot, his love interest joins him. I guess she loved his moves that he miraculously learned all in one day.

I know this is going to sound incredibly narrow minded and shallow, but I'm of the opinion that none of these characters would actually exist in real life. I cannot picture someone sitting in the theater, looking at Napoleon, and saying "sweet, that's me." I cannot picture that with anyone in this movie come to think of it! For Napoleon, that could be because I do not buy Jon Heder's performance. He doesn't fit in with this nerdy personality. Watching him act with those big teeth, squinty eyes, and that same tone of voice, I didn't feel like I was watching a loser. I felt like I was watching a stoner trying to act like a loser.

But then there are the other people too. Does anybody know anyone who sets up a video camera and throws footballs at it all day long while they live out of their van in the middle of nowhere and think that it’s 1982? Do you pull your older brother on your bicycle while he's on roller skates (the brother being 31), and can you picture that same person falling in love with his attractive internet chat buddy and having it actually work out? I could be wrong about all of that. Maybe if it were presented differently than it does in this movie, all of that could happen. If this were some fantasy film, I wouldn't give a damn about realistic characters, but this movie seems to have been made for people to relate to. Who in hell would relate to this film? Jeffrey Dahmer? Not that this PG rated film at all mirrors the beginning stages of a serial killer (or does it?), but come to think of it, Napoleon does look a little bit like a young, pre-5 o'clock shadow Dahmer. Interesting.

The movie has since gone on to be some sort of independent hit at the theaters, gaining praise by fans and critics alike. Well, at least critics anyway. I watched this movie in the theater with a pretty decent sized crowd. They all laughed at the same times I did, which was about twice. I laughed once when Napoleon tried to jump a ramp with a bicycle and I laughed again at the sight of his brother dressed up like a gangsta. With that in mind, is "Napoleon Dynamite" supposed to be a comedy? I didn't laugh at anything else, but it didn't seem like anything else was supposed to be funny. If it's a drama than it still has no serious insight outside of the imaginary world writer/director Jared Hess has created. The trailers say it's a comedy. But that brings me back to the fact that no one really laughed at the screening I went to, and that can only bring me to this: Are there many people out there who actually liked "Napoleon Dynamite"?

Recommended: No