Napoleon Who?

Every so often an independent movie comes out of left field and catches cinemagoers completely by surprise with its insight and voracity. This is almost that movie. ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ is a new anti-hero – the Holden Caulfield of the MTV generation, though with slightly less social ability – and embodies every outsider who ever sat front row centre of the class with his mouth hanging open.

Napoleon is introduced on screen giving a speech about Japanese scientists planting explosives in Loch Ness to blow anything there out of the water, and local wizards clubbing together to cast a spell over the lake to protect ‘Nessie’ - this being, of course, his entry for the current events section of class! Napoleon lives with his (much) older brother Kip and his grandmother. When she breaks a bone whilst dune-buggying, their strange Uncle Rico comes to 'babysit'. Kip and Rico find a connection and are soon selling Tupperware together in order to buy a time machine, and they both conspire to make Napoleon's already complicated life unbearable. Introduce a monosyllabic Mexican new kid, a dysfunctional 80’s throwaway girl, a hungry Llama, a dozen roads to nowhere, one of the funniest dance sequences since ‘Flashdance’, and the mix is complete.

'Napoleon Dynamite' is one of the most hilarious films I have seen this year – it is smart, poignant and utterly watchable, drawing threads of anguish (what else can you call the embarrassments of youth?) with threads of humour. Saying that, I am not sure it can cross any huge generational gaps – some of the scenes are too quintessentially teenager, and typically American, to maintain a very wide (as it deserves) following.

A welcome offering from the fairytale land of man-with-camera, I take movies that are full of life and character, like this, over the blockbuster tosh that can sometimes poison our perception of cinema. ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ is an absolute gem of independent cinema, and a welcome relief from mediocrity.

Though it deserves a much fuller audience, 'Napoleon Dynamite' will probably dominate the cult classic section of Laser for a good many years to come.

If stars are the quantification of a movie, then this dynamite (it had to be done) offering gets a blistering four-and-three-quarters stars!!