The film just presents itself as a weird comedy about a socially awkward napoleon dynamite, but there are so many subtle, but very funny jokes underneath it's more ridiculous exterior.
There are visual gags all throughout the film. In a short scene in a diner, napoleon's uncle is stirring his drink with a white object that looks like a straw, after about a second he pulls it up and reveals it to be a plastic spoon instead, no mention is ever made about it. Very small, but indicative of the ampunt of stuff they managed to cram into the film.
the awkward kids writing their answer to a dance request under 2 or three layers of paper, rather than the one that the popular girl does.
The tupperware breaking when being tested by being ran over with a car. There's the joke that it breaks when they claimed it wouldn't, and the additional joke that some crazy person decided that Tupperware needed to be able to withstand being run over by a car, and wouldn't buy it otherwise.
Napoleon walking all the way outside of the house to make a private call, only to ask if someone was home.
The house itself also has a ton of gags, they are just everywhere.
Maybe I've mentioned stuff that people are aware of, and I've just explained the movie.
But I would like to make the case that "napoleon dynamite", for how stupid it presents itself is actually quite a clever comedy deep down, almost on the level of something like airplane, except more subtle, and with less jokes per minute
Submitted July 18, 2020 at 04:45AM by steffenb1 https://ift.tt/3h887GP
