| 90 |
Film Threat
The cast playing these eccentric characters is magnificent...This is definitely one of the most unique comedies you’ll see all year.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Jon Heder in the magnificent Napoleon Dynamite, is one of the most winning movie creations in years.
|
| 90 |
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
It's charming. It's hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It's Napoleon Dynamite.
|
| 83 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
If you're sick of the gross-out gags and sex jokes of contemporary teen comedy, this defiant blast of idiosyncratic individuality just could be your tonic.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
I laughed. And I laughed primarily over Heder's hilarious performance. You ain't seen nothing till you've seen Napoleon attack that tether ball.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
Thrusts us into a high school senior year like no other.
|
| 80 |
Wall Street Journal
More than a deadpan comedy about oddball losers. This dork has his day, and this story has its touching subtext -- growing pains relieved by unlikely hope.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
For older and more reflective viewers, it’s a quirky, fresh slice-of-life more inviting than a tater-tot pyramid.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
Karen Karbo
A cult classic-in-the-making.
|
| 75 |
Charlotte Observer
A diverting and loosely connected series of episodes about the most bizarre screen family of 2004.
|
| 75 |
Boston Globe
An inspired dead-end stunt that keeps delivering snarky laughs far longer than it has any right to.
|
| 75 |
Premiere
While Solondz's world is a hell hole and Anderson's "Rushmore" is a place of high-toned and often poignant whimsy, Napoleon Dynamite's unceasing burlesque creates a world that is pretty much a cartoon--and it's a damn funny cartoon to boot.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
Refreshing for its simplicity and its originality in a marketplace dominated by soulless blockbusters.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
There's plenty of humor in the film, but the movie is often a little uncomfortable to watch, and Napoleon is not an easy guy to like. Rooting for him takes effort.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
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. Nerdiness will never seem the same.
|
| 75 |
Rolling Stone
Hess and his terrific cast -- Heder is geek perfection -- make their own kind of deadpan hilarity. You'll laugh till it hurts. Sweet.
|
| 70 |
Variety
An absurdist piece about a rural community of clueless cretins who careen through life like poorly played pinballs, Napoleon Dynamite represents the definition of the comedy of condescension and ridicule.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Both Hesses and a surprisingly large number of their very talented cast and crew are graduates of Brigham Young University's film program: Could BYU one day join the esteemed ranks of USC and NYU?
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
Toward the end the freak-show humor begins to yield diminishing returns, but for most of its length this delivers a steady stream of uncomfortable gut laughs.
|
| 70 |
Newsweek
Devin Gordon
This achingly funny film is a string of vignettes with no real plot, so it has periods of pointlessness--come to think of it, it's all pointless. But it has "cult classic" written all over it.
|
| 70 |
Slate
Napoleon Dynamite is too low-wattage to be a true nerd anthem, but it's charming in retrospect.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
As slight as the picture is, though, its hero is an indelible creation.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
There isn't much Napoleonic grandeur in this Idaho-set high school comedy, which in spite of its most condescending instincts, does have its moments.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
With the exception of one truly glorious dance solo, the movie treats its hero - and his equally uncool family - with undisguised disdain.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
The performances, even those by trained actors like Mr. Ramirez and Ms. Majorino, have the hesitant, blinking opacity that some directors look for in nonprofessional casts. Their awkwardness is charming, and part of the point of the movie, but it also makes for some dull stretches and thwarts your ability to regard the characters with sympathy rather than mere curiosity.
|
| 60 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Sure, it quickly turns into a one-note exercise in laughing at the yokels, but at least it has a vision.
|
| 60 |
Empire
Helen O'Hara
As long as you don't mind making fun of the afflicted, there are some killer comic moments.
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
So deadpan a film is Napoleon Dynamite, the story and the name of a gangly high school misfit in Preston, Idaho, that I can't say whether it was intended as a character study or a comedy.
|
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun
At the end of Napoleon Dynamite, you're glad the geeks have their day (even Kip's chat-mate turns out be a winner); you're also relieved to be rid of them.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
It's fairly entertaining--but not the second coming of indie comedy some notices might lead you to expect.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Has to be enjoyed in spurts. There's no cohesive story, just a series of opportunities for the title character (Jon Heder) to strut his gawky stuff.
|
| 50 |
The Hollywood Reporter
A one-note, lightweight, condescending comedy about the rubes of Idaho.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Filmmaker Jared Hess (who cowrote the script with his wife, Jerusha Hess) installs Napoleon front and center as a punchline in and of himself -- and as that dispiriting product of narrative defeat, a symbol.
|
| 40 |
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Crust
It's a simple collection of sight gags and pratfalls that mines the overly familiar turf of awkward adolescence without bringing anything truly original to the experience.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Sun-Times
There is a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor, and Jared Hess' Napoleon Dynamite pushes it as far as it can go.
|
| 30 |
LA Weekly
If Napoleon Dynamite really is, as reported, a semiautobiographical exercise, it is one of the most astoundingly self-hating such exercises in memory.
|
