Napoleon Dynamite

The story of the outcast-nerd trying to find themselves in the world of high school is a common one that has been told many different times. Each story begins with the loveable nerd whom their peers hate and who seems to be completely alone. The audience is made to feel sorry for this nerd; to have empathy with their struggle. This feeling of pity is what makes the story worth telling.
But Napoleon Dynamite is not that story. John Hader stars as the geeky outsider Napoleon, the friendless daydreaming dweeb of his high school in Idaho. He lives with his 32 year-old-brother Kip and his grandmother. Kip, who is similarly loser-ish, is unemployed and spends most of his days in online chat-rooms looking for love (which is significant later).
While visiting friends in the middle of the desert, Napoleon’s grandmother injures herself and is unable to return home to care for her two grandsons. So she enlists the help of their uncle, Rico, to watch over Kip and Napoleon while she recovers. Uncle Rico is a former star quarterback who has lived in the year 1982 since his team won the state championship.
The movie is full of awkward acting, bad jokes and situations that try too hard to be funny. Absent from the movie is a plot, good writing, and any character development.
Very little happens to indicate a plot: sure, Pedro (Napoleon’s friend) does try to run for class president and yes, he does meet a girl, but neither of those quests is fully finished until the very end of the film. To me, it seemed like the film was made up of a hodge-podge of random events in Napoleon’s life, which are loosely strung together by the theme of him being a complete loser.
The one good part of this movie is the performance of John Hader as Napoleon. In the traditional sense of an outsider movie, there is no quality about Hader’s Napoleon that is loveable. He’s just an asshole the whole movie. A wimpy asshole, maybe, but if he had been a pitiable loser who tries but fails to be accepted, the film would have been even worse.