• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Backward glance

September 16, 2010 by ldemanski

220px-Napoleon_dynamite_post.jpgI watched Napoleon Dynamite last night for the first time since its original release, and was pleased to see that it holds up exceptionally well.

I looked up what I wrote about it in 2004:

Napoleon Dynamite is an unusually smart movie masquerading as a teen-angst farce. The best high-school flicks have a way of being quite unexpectedly touching, and sometimes even subtly observant (Heathers was one of the smartest movies of the past decade), and if I had to choose between, say, Saving Private Ryan and Dazed and Confused, or Bulworth and Clueless, I’d opt for the feather-light soufflé over the heavily earnest main course every time. Napoleon Dynamite, an independent comedy made by a bunch of Idaho-based crazies, is as good as or better than those fondly remembered films, and it also has a touch of strangeness, even surrealism, that makes it pleasingly tricky to categorize.

The underlying plot mechanism is lifted from Revenge of the Nerds, but the title character (exquisitely well played by Jon Heder) is so extreme in his geekery that he never engages your sympathy–nor does he try. That’s what’s makes Napoleon Dynamite interesting: though it’s pulverizingly funny, it’s not a feel-good movie. Instead, it combines the sharp-eyed small-town spoofery of Waiting for Guffman with the tough-minded social satire of Election and Daria. Yet none of these cinematic reference points, relevant though they are, can fully convey its special quality.

I’d stand by those words today.

Filed Under: main

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

September 2010
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Aug   Oct »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Snapshot: FDR’s 1933 inauguration
  • Almanac: Ralph Ellison on power
  • Lookback: “Call me Bartleby”
  • Almanac: Thomas Fuller on memory
  • Just because: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays Ravel

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in