There’s a lot to be said about Napoleon Dynamite, and I think it’s all been said already. Maybe it’s just that I’ve read nearly everything that’s been written on it. My thoughts just don’t seem fresh anymore.

I do remember the first time I saw Jared Hess’ Peluca – the short film from which Napoleon Dynamite was later developed – at BYU’s Final Cut a few years ago. The short film expo had a lot of strange little films, but Peluca left us with out mouths gaping open like Jon Heder’s in the film. “What the heck was that?” we asked each other, and promptly forgot about it as the next short film began.

Years later, when Napoleon Dynamite made such a splash at Sundance, I had to rewatch Peluca to see if there was something I was missing. There was. After a few viewings I had caught on and was laughing harder each time. So, I was prepared for Napoleon Dynamite when it came out. Maybe too prepared. It wasn't a full length Peluca.

But Napoleon Dynamite is funny. It really is. And it’s the quality of humor that’s strong enough to stay funny as many times as you want to watch it. Some people have complained that the humor is a disdainful one – that there’s a constantly mocking tone towards the characters. Of course, no one complained about Dumb and Dumber, or any other cornball comedies. But maybe it’s to Hess’ credit that these characters – though extraordinarily strange – are somehow absolutely real. We begin to feel bad for laughing at them because they’re so close to people we may have known – or better yet – people we may see in ourselves. But is the humor justified? I think it’s really just as innocent as Napoleon himself. Though there’s certainly a degree to which we’re laughing at the charaters, I think the character’s realism do manage to arouse our sympathies. To say that Napoleon Dynamite is just an opportunity to laugh at nerds misses some of the film’s subtlety. It just feels like the humor is innocent enough that even Napoleon might be laughing too – if only he had a clue.

On the other hand, I don’t think that Napoleon Dynamite’s quirkiness really lives up to the genius the some have attached to it. It’s certainly clever, but the cleverness seems to come from its originality. No one’s ever done anything quite like it before. I heard that Hess was considering a Napoleon Dynamite TV series. I think he could do it, and I think nearly every episode would be as funny as the movie. At least Napoleon would. Uncle Rico would need some serious character development to keep up the humor – his obsession with 1982 has run dry by the end of the film.

Napoleon Dynamite also never escapes the blatantly “independent” feel. The camerawork sometimes felt amateurish – not bad, just not professional. But then again, with something like Napoleon Dynamite, it’s almost better not a have a clean cut cinematography.

Of course, with something like Napoleon Dynamite, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that this world is one that we can recognize and understand. It’s a world where we can laugh, cry, or laugh till we cry.

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