Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite is a 2004 American independent coming-of-age comedy film produced by Jeremy Coon, Chris Wyatt, and Sean Covel, written by Jared and Jerusha Hess, and directed by Jared Hess. The film stars Jon Heder in the role of the titular character, a nerdy high-school student who deals with several dilemmas: befriending an immigrant who wants to be class president, awkwardly pursuing a romance with a fellow student, and living with his quirky family.
The film was Hess's first full-length movie and is partially adapted from his earlier short film, Peluca (2002). Napoleon Dynamite was acquired at the Sundance Film Festival by Fox Searchlight Pictures, which partnered with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films for the release. It was filmed at Preston High School (Idaho) and different areas in Franklin County, Idaho, in the summer of 2003. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004. Most of the situations in the movie are loosely based on the life of Jared Hess. The film's total worldwide gross revenue was $46.1 million. The film has since developed a cult following and was voted number 14 on Bravo's 100 funniest movies.
Socially awkward 16-year-old Napoleon Dynamite lives in Preston, Idaho, with his grandmother, Carlinda, and his technology-addicted older brother, Kip. Napoleon's school days are spent doodling mythical creatures, dealing with bullies, and playing tetherball by himself.
Carlinda is injured in a quad bike accident and asks Napoleon and Kip's Uncle Rico to look after the boys while she recovers. Flirtatious, middle-aged Rico arrives in the camper van he lives in, and teams up with Kip to sell items door-to-door in a get-rich-quick scheme. Kip wants to pay for his internet girlfriend, LaFawnduh, to visit from Detroit. Former high-school athlete Rico dwells on his past and dreams of going back in time. He believes wealth will help him get over his breakup with his girlfriend and failed dreams of NFL stardom.
Napoleon becomes friends with Deb, a shy girl who sells headshots and knick-knacks to raise money for college, and Pedro, a bold transfer student from Juárez, Mexico. Pedro is rebuffed when he asks the popular and snobby Summer Wheatly to accompany him to the high school dance. Deb gladly accepts. Pedro encourages Napoleon to find a date and he picks popular classmate Trisha. As a gift, he draws an (unintentionally bad) picture of her and delivers it to Trisha's mother, one of Rico's customers. Rico tells Trisha's mother embarrassing stories about Napoleon to evoke sympathy. She buys his wares and forces Trisha to accept Napoleon's invitation. Trisha goes to the dance with Napoleon but abandons him to hang out with Summer. Pedro allows Napoleon to dance with Deb.
Pedro runs against Summer for class president. The two factions put up flyers and hand out trinkets to attract voters. To demonstrate their "skills" and increase their respect around the school, Napoleon and Pedro enter a Future Farmers of America competition, grading milk and cow udders. They win medals, but it does little for their popularity.
Napoleon buys an instructional dance videotape. Kip's girlfriend, LaFawnduh, arrives and gives him an urban makeover, outfitting him in hip-hop regalia. Seeing that Napoleon is learning to dance, LaFawnduh gives him a mixtape.
Rico continues to spread embarrassing rumors about Napoleon to prospective customers. He tries to sell Deb a breast-enhancement product, claiming it was Napoleon's suggestion, causing her to break off their friendship. Napoleon confronts Rico and tells him to leave, but Rico refuses. His sales scheme ends when martial arts instructor Rex walks in on Rico demonstrating the breast-enhancement product on his wife, and assaults him.
On Election Day, Summer gives a speech before the student body, and presents a dance skit to "Larger than Life" by the Backstreet Boys. Pedro gives a despondent speech after discovering he is also required to perform a skit. Napoleon gives the sound engineer LaFawnduh's mixtape and spontaneously performs a dance routine to "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai as Pedro's skit. Napoleon's routine receives a standing ovation, stunning Summer and her boyfriend, Don.
Pedro becomes class president, Grandma returns from the hospital, Rico reunites with his girlfriend, Kip and LaFawnduh leave on a bus for Michigan, and Napoleon and Deb reconcile and play tetherball together.
Two months later, Kip and LaFawnduh get married, and Napoleon arrives late at the wedding on a stallion which he tamed for Kip and LaFawnduh to ride out on.
In 2002, Brigham Young University film students Jon Heder and Jared Hess collaborated on a class project; the result was a 9-minute short movie shot on black-and-white 16mm film entitled Peluca about a nerdy high school student named Seth.
Peluca was shown at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival and was well received. Jeremy Coon convinced Hess to drop out of school and adapt it into a feature-length film, and he helped him to find investors for the project. Hess sent the short film and the script to a variety of different casting directors, many of whom thought that the idea was "too weird or they just didn't like the character," Hess explained. One casting director suggested Jake Gyllenhaal over unknown actor Jon Heder for the lead role but Hess believed Heder was the only actor to play the part. Jason Lee was offered the role of Uncle Rico while Brad Garrett auditioned for Rex and enjoyed the script, but decided not to commit. Actor Vincent Gallo was also considered and almost cast as Uncle Rico. Heder was paid $1,000 for starring in the film, but successfully negotiated to receive more after the film became a runaway success.
Hess shot the film on location in Preston, in southeastern Idaho, located near the Utah border, in July 2003. Operating on a tight budget of $400,000, Hess cast many of his friends from school, including Heder and Aaron Ruell, and he relied on the generosity of Preston locals, who provided housing and food to crew members. Among the established actors in the cast was comedy veteran Diedrich Bader, who filmed his scenes as virile martial art instructor Rex in one day. He recalled in 2011 that Napoleon Dynamite "still to this day [is] one of the two top scripts I've ever read", alongside Office Space (1999), one of his most-recognized roles. "It was very, very hot," Hess recalled in a Rolling Stone interview. "But it was so much fun being in this rural farm town making a movie. We shot it in 23 days, so we were moving very, very fast; I just didn't have a lot of film to be able to do a lot of takes. It was a bunch of friends getting together to make a movie. It was like, 'Are people going to get this? Is it working?'"
Hess describes the film as being "so autobiographical". "I grew up in a family of six boys in Preston, Idaho, and the character of Napoleon was a hybrid of all the most nerdy and awkward parts of me and my brothers growing up. Jerusha really was like Deb growing up. Her mom made her a dress when she was going to a middle school dance and she said, 'I hadn't really developed yet, so my mom overcompensated and made some very large, fluffy shoulders.' Some guy dancing with her patted the sleeves and actually said, 'I like your sleeves ... they're real big,"' Hess said in an interview with Rolling Stone.
The film is set during the 2004–2005 school year, as shown on Napoleon's student ID card in the title sequence. The film depicts numerous culturally retroactive elements harkening back between the 1970s to 1990s. For example, Deb wears a side ponytail and Napoleon wears Moon Boots, both popular fashion trends of the 1980s. One scene is set at a school dance that plays only 1980s music such as Alphaville's "Forever Young," whereas an earlier scene features students performing a sign language rendition of "The Rose" (1980), originally made popular by Bette Midler (it was actually sung in the film by L.A.-based studio session vocalist Darci Monet, who was never credited or paid any residuals for her work). Much of the technology in the film is also archaic; Napoleon uses a top-loader VCR and Walkman cassette player, Kip connects to the Internet via a pay-per-minute dial-up connection and Uncle Rico drives a 1975 Dodge Tradesman. The song Napoleon Dynamite dances to at the end of the film—"Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai—came out in 1999.
The film was originally made without opening titles. Audiences at test screenings were confused about when the film was set. Eight months after the film was completed, the title sequence was filmed in cinematographer Munn Powell's basement. Ruell, who played Kip, suggested the idea of the title sequence. The sequence shows a pair of hands placing and removing several objects on a table. Objects like plates of food had the credits written in condiments, while other objects like a Lemonheads box or a tube of ChapStick had the credits printed on them. Hess explains:
On the studio's reaction to the sequence, Hess adds:
The Hesses wrote the climactic dance scene because they knew Heder liked to dance. "Jared's wife was like, 'Jon, I hear you're pretty good dancer. I've seen you boogie; it's pretty sweet,'" recalled Heder. "And I was like, 'Well, I like to dabble.' I liked to mess around sometimes in front of friends and dance. But I did take pride in it. I won't be modest. I wasn't great but I did like to mess around ... Cut to two years later: after we had shot the short, they were like, 'Okay we're going to have you dancing in the movie as the climax. This is going to make or break the film.'"
When it came to shooting the dance scene for the final film, the producers scheduled to film it towards the end of the film. When they finally got to the scene, they were running out of money and film. They only had one roll of film (approximately 10.5 minutes) left to shoot.
"It was a lot of pressure," Heder observed. "I was like, 'Oh, crap!' This isn't just a silly little scene. This is the moment where everything comes, and he's making the sacrifice for his friend. That's the whole theme of the movie. Everything leads up to this. Napoleon's been this loser. This has to be the moment where he lands a victory. He gets up there, and it's quiet: no reaction from the audience."
The dance was spontaneously improvised by Heder, with some choreography help from Tina Majorino, and additional moves taken from Saturday Night Fever, Michael Jackson, and Soul Train. "They were like, 'No, Jon, just figure it out.' So I just winged it. I danced three times and they took the best pieces from each of those."
"When you're shooting in independent film, you don't know what you're going to get the rights to," Heder explained. "We thought Jamiroquai might be expensive. So we danced to three different songs. To that song and another Jamiroquai song, "Little L." We danced to Michael Jackson, something off of Off the Wall. Just those three. And then we got the rights to Jamiroquai. And I think that was half our budget."
Upon the film's release, it was noted that the name "Napoleon Dynamite" had originally been used by musician Elvis Costello, most visibly on his 1986 album Blood & Chocolate, although he had used the pseudonym on a single B-side as early as 1982. Filmmaker Jared Hess remarks that he was unaware of Costello's use of the name until two days before the end of shooting, when he was informed by a teenage extra. He later said, "Had I known that name was used by anybody else prior to shooting the whole film, it definitely would have been changed ... I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence." Hess claims that "Napoleon Dynamite" was the name of a man he met around 2000 on the streets of Cicero, Illinois, while doing missionary work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Costello believes that Hess got the name from him, whether directly or indirectly. Costello said, "The guy just denies completely that I made the name up ... but I invented it. Maybe somebody told him the name and he truly feels that he came to it by chance. But it's two words that you're never going to hear together."
Napoleon Dynamite premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2004, where it was picked up by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Shortly after, Fox collaborated with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films to release the film, with Fox handling North American distribution, and Paramount and MTV distributing internationally. The film was theatrically released in the United States on June 11, 2004.
On June 9, 2014, the film was screened at Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles to celebrate its 10th anniversary. In addition, a bronze statue of Napoleon Dynamite, complete with tetherball, was placed at the 20th Century Fox studio lot.
A 20th anniversary screening of the film took place at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2024, to commemorate the festival's 20th anniversary, in the form of a new 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative produced by Searchlight Pictures and its parent company Walt Disney Studios, under the supervision of Hess. On the announcement, he remarked "Returning to Sundance with Napoleon Dynamite feels like a homecoming. When it premiered at the festival 20 years ago, we never anticipated the incredible reaction it would receive ... It's always been a very personal film for Jerusha and me, so the love affair it's had with audiences all these years continues to delight us. To commemorate its 20th anniversary, we are thrilled to screen this newly restored version ... The restoration team did an amazing job bringing to life new details from the original film's negative that we'd never seen before. We can't wait to share it!"
The director and several cast members attended the Sundance screening in Park City, Utah. Efren Ramirez reprised part of Pedro's speech at the student assembly by saying, "I really don't have much to say. Have a happy Sundance."
Napoleon Dynamite was released on VHS and DVD on December 21, 2004, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment in North America and by Paramount Home Entertainment in all other territories. The DVD is a double-sided disc containing full screen and letterbox versions of the film, plus Peluca and deleted scenes—all with audio commentary. A 2-disc edition (dubbed "Like, the Best Special Edition, Ever!") was released in 2006 with additional deleted scenes, promotional material and a second commentary track, but fell out of print in favor of the first edition DVD and the Blu-Ray.
The "10th Anniversary Edition" Blu-ray was released on June 2, 2014. A digital release of the 4K screening of the film is also currently available to purchase and stream.
On August 30, 2011, the film's production company Napoleon Pictures filed a lawsuit against Fox Searchlight Pictures for $10 million for underreporting royalties and taking improper revenue deductions. In its term sheet, Fox agreed to pay 31.66% of net profits on home video. The lawsuit said that a 2008 audit revealed that Fox was only paying net royalties on home videos at a 9.66% rate, and there were underreported royalties and improper deductions.
Napoleon Pictures also alleged that Fox had breached the agreement in multiple other respects, including underreporting pay television license fees, failing to report electronic sell-through revenue, charging residuals on home video sales, as well as overcharging residuals on home video sales, deducting a number of costs and charges Fox had no right to deduct and/or for which there is no supporting documentation.
In May 2012, Fox went to trial after failing to win a summary judgment on the case. The trial began on June 19, 2012. On November 28, 2012, a 74-page decision sided with Fox on 9 of the 11 issues. Napoleon Pictures was awarded $150,000 based on Fox accounting irregularities.
Despite a very limited initial release, Napoleon Dynamite was a commercial success. It was filmed on an estimated budget of a mere $400,000, and less than a year after its release, it had grossed $44,940,956. It also spawned a slew of merchandise, from refrigerator magnets to T-shirts and Halloween costumes.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 72% of 175 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.40/10. The website's consensus reads, "A charming, quirky, and often funny comedy." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 64 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine complimented the film, saying, "Hess and his terrific cast – Heder is geek perfection – make their own kind of deadpan hilarity. You'll laugh till it hurts. Sweet." The Christian Science Monitor called the film "a refreshing new take on the overused teen-comedy genre" and said that the film "may not make you laugh out loud – it's too sly and subtle for that – but it will have you smiling every minute, and often grinning widely at its weirded-out charm."
Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice praised the film as "an epic, magisterially observed pastiche on all-American geekhood, flooring the competition with a petulant shove." In a mixed review, The New York Times praised Heder's performance and the "film's most interesting quality, which is its stubborn, confident, altogether weird individuality", while criticizing the film's resolution that comes "too easily." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one-and-a-half stars, writing that he felt that "the movie makes no attempt to make [Napoleon] likable" and that it contained "a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor". At the time, Entertainment Weekly critics gave it a grade C and C− respectively. Entertainment Weekly later ranked Napoleon #88 on its 2010 list of The 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years, saying, "A high school misfit found a sweet spot, tapping into our inner dork." The film was on several year-end lists. Rolling Stone placed it at number 22 of the 25 Top DVDs of 2004.
After nearly two decades of rumors, it was reported in September 2020, that a sequel to Napoleon Dynamite was in discussion. Heder stated that he is interested in a darker take on the film's characters instead of rehashing the original film's plot:
Ramirez improvised a script for a sequel in which Pedro is married to Summer Wheatly, has five kids and owns a bakery. In the same hypothetical script, Kip has fulfilled his dream to become a cage fighter, while Rico has ventured into a new business that he believes will make him rich.
In January 2023, Heder stated that he believed a sequel was "inevitable" and reiterated his interest in displaying a darker tone for the sequel. In October 2024, he stated once again that a sequel was possible, saying "that the door's not closed yet."
In April 2010, Fox announced that an animated series was in development, with the original cast reprising their roles. The series debuted on Sunday, January 15, 2012. Director Jared Hess, his co-screenwriter wife Jerusha, and Mike Scully produced the show in association with 20th Century Fox Television. On May 14, 2012, it was announced that Fox had canceled the series after 6 episodes. The complete series was released on DVD on November 4, 2014, by Olive Films.
The 2010 film When in Rome features Jon Heder portraying Lance, a street magician who attempts to impress the film's protagonist Beth, played by Kristen Bell. In one scene, Lance introduces her to his assistant Juan, played by Efren Ramirez, reuniting the actors.
In 2016, Burger King brought back the cheesy tots menu item. This was followed by an ad featuring Heder and Ramirez as patrons with Ramirez having bought the item and Heder listlessly asking if he can have one, only to grab the whole lot and shove them into his pants.
For the film's 20th anniversary, Ore-Ida produced a new commercial with Heder fully reprising the role of Napoleon Dynamite, now promoting "tot-protecting" pants.
The term "The Napoleon Dynamite Problem" has been used to describe the phenomenon where "quirky" films such as Napoleon Dynamite, Lost in Translation (2003) and I Heart Huckabees (2004) prove difficult for researchers to create algorithms that are able to predict whether or not a particular viewer will like the film based on their ratings of previously viewed films.
For several years the city of Preston held a "Napoleon Dynamite Festival" in the summer. Many of the featured festival themes related to events occurring during the film. For example: Tetherball Tournament, Tater Tot Eating Contest, Moon Boot Dance, Impersonation, Look-A-Like Contest, Football Throwing Contest and more. Fifteen years after the film came out fans continue to visit Preston, primarily as a side trip as they make their way to Yellowstone National Park.
The success of Napoleon Dynamite led to other films set in small towns, such as Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Juno (2007), which would have similar critical, popular, and financial success.