Napoleon Dynamite (DVD)

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Fourth, none of the characters are particularly likeable. Napoleon is so very unhappy with his self-imposed loneliness that he grouches at everyone for the better part of the movie; he's really quite unpleasant. Uncle Rico is a conceited, arrogant snake, in love with himself and his muscles. The cheerleaders are snobs. The football players are jerks. Only Pedro and Deb are at all kindhearted, but neither of them is very interesting as a person. And nobody, but nobody, has a sense of humor. Dang, these folks are dull.

I wonder if I would have liked this film more had I identified better with the characters. I wonder, too, if I wasn't secretly laughing at, rather than with, some of these movie portrayals; I mean, it isn't hard to do. "Napoleon Dynamite" makes a good attempt for about its first quarter hour at showing us the dilemma of the high school outsider, but I found a movie like "Ghost World" much more honest and insightful in accomplishing the same thing.

The geeky premise of "Napoleon Dynamite" wears thin fast, as I've said, and a few minutes with these sad sacks was enough for me. The bleak Idaho landscape aptly reflects the bleak lives of the movie's characters, but that gimmick, too, wears out its welcome pretty quickly. Like the "Napoleon Dynamite" characters, the movie wants to be liked; it just doesn't know how to go about doing it.

Video:
The picture is presented in both its original theatrical-release widescreen, an anamorphic aspect ratio measuring approximately 1.74:1 across my standard-screen HD television; and in 1.33:1 "fullscreen," which cuts off a small portion of the sides of each frame. Occasionally, one notices, however, that the fullscreen also displays a bit more information at the top and bottom of a frame, so you take your choice of matting. Since the widescreen was the format shown in theaters, it's the one I watched.

The actual picture quality can vary from slightly blurred to absolutely perfect, so, again, you take the good with the bad. Most of the time, the image quality is quite good, so I wouldn't worry about it. Colors are natural without being overly bright or overly dark, a serious plus. Grain, halos, moiré effects, and other digital artifacts are non-issues. More plusses. Let's conclude that the video quality is fine.

Audio:
The sound is reproduced via Dolby Digital 5.1, although there isn't much need for all 5.1 channels in a movie so dialogue driven as this one. Most of the time, you won't even notice the movie is in two-channel stereo, let alone multichannel surround. The frequency response is modest, as is the dynamic range, except in two scenes: one featuring a low-rider car and another featuring a dance sequence. Then the rear channels, the low bass, and the dynamics all come into their own. Otherwise, the sound does its job quietly and efficiently.

Extras:
The movie comes on a single, dual-sided disc. Side A contains the feature film in fullscreen; twenty scene selections; an audio commentary with director/co-writer Jared Hess, actor Jon Heder, and producer Jeremy Coon; an original, eight-minute, black-and-white short film, "Peluca," on which the feature was based, again with optional commentary; a three-minute featurette, "The Making of the Wedding of the Century," a kind of follow-up to the movie's story, with comments from the actors; some MTV on-air promos; a trailer for "Arrested Development"; and various theatrical trailers for other Fox products. Side B contains the feature film in widescreen, the twenty scene selections and audio commentary; four deleted scenes, also with commentary; and a still gallery. English and Spanish are available for the movie's spoken languages, with English, French, and Spanish for subtitles.

Parting Shots:
The characters in "Napoleon Dynamite" are filled with a lot of humanity; that is, they are made to seem as real and human as possible, a commendable asset in a motion picture. But they are also stereotyped and one-sided. Everyone seems angry, bored, boring, conceited, airheaded, dim-witted, or backward to the point of annoyance. I liked the movie's premise; I liked its winsome heart; I liked its attempt to present a story without gross overtones. But I found the end result more tedious than entertaining or uplifting, the characters more vacuous than genuine.