Napoleon Dynamite is a must-see, offbeat, character-driven indie satire about nerd love in a small-town high school. You’ve probably seen the trailer with that addictive song, ‘I Want Candy.’

 

The film is uproarious and incredibly sweet. Its sharp screenplay is loaded with memorable, deadpan one-liners. You’ll relate to the movie if you weren’t in the popular crowd in high school or if you harbor any affection for music of the ’80s. You’ll laugh knowingly if you knew any sci-fi/fantasy fans, the ones who were always sketching fantastical creatures and spacescapes in class. A lot of its ’80s nerdana is dead-on accurate: unironic retro T-shirts, tight blue jeans sans belt, parachute pants and puffy shoes.

 

Dynamite is emotionally manipulative, but it’s the warmest movie I’ve seen since Lost in Translation. The characters are so dorky-vulnerable, you laugh at them but fall in love with them anyway. It’s unusually sure-footed in the realm of emotions; it’s the kind of flick that can play ‘Forever Young’ for laughs, but then pull off When in Rome’s ‘The Promise’ with a bang. That takes a light touch, it’s a rarety.

 

Some of the absurd plot points are played for comic effect and require suspension of disbelief. There’s a lot of awful cholo/vato and bling-bling stereotyping, but it’s played archly, not straight. The ending is Nickelodeon-pretty-perfect, a smarter movie wouldn’t have wimped out. This is, however, lump-in-throat, ‘aww, so cute’ material which you rarely see in flat, effects-driven mainstream flicks (Riddick, I’m looking at you).

 

I fell for it, hard. Great date material, I highly recommend it.