'Napoleon Dynamite,'
more like a bomb
Fox series mangles the 2004 feature film from which it's adapted
By Tom Conroy
Feb 3, 2012
When it comes to adaptations of previous works, missing the point is a tradition in both movies and TV. So we get, for example, Sherlock Holmes movies that are about fistfights and not sleuthing. The Showtime series “Episodes” is all about how a clever British sitcom is turned into a moronic American one.
Fox’s new animated sitcom “Napoleon Dynamite,” airing Sundays at 8:30 p.m., takes the 2004 feature film’s best quality — its matter-of-fact but hilarious look at the drabness and self-delusion of America’s lower middle class — and buries it in layers of increasingly absurd action. Some of the jokes are OK, but the satire is lost.
The action in the movie, while funny, remained plausibly bland. That’s one reason that no one wished it were longer and no one was particularly eager for a sequel. Perhaps realizing this is the case, the movie’s writers, Jared and Jerusha Hess, and their TV collaborator, Mike Scully, have pumped up the plots.
In the premiere episode, Napoleon (voiced by the movie’s star, Jon Heder), a high school nerd who, unlike most TV and movie nerds, isn’t an idealized version of the screenwriter as a young man, buys a tube of acne cream that gives him a case of ’roid rage. His gym teacher signs him up for an illegal fight club held in a Thunderdome-like silo.
Napoleon’s new macho persona attracts the online girlfriend of his even nerdier older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell). When the two of them try to settle their differences in the arena, they wind up disappointing the huge audience when the acne cream wears off and they start pulling each other’s hair. The episode ends with the brothers fleeing a huge mob.
What all this has to do with the movie is nothing.
The second episode stays a little closer to social satire. When a teacher makes his class take compatibility tests, Napoleon’s best female friend, Deb (Tina Majorino), is paired with a popular jock. Although the story allows for some clever insights into small-town class distinctions, the over-the-top ending has Napoleon and his friends waterskiing onto a houseboat and then escaping on a jet ski.
The third episode, in which Napoleon works at a liger ranch, at least is in character: He drew pictures of lion-tiger hybrids in the movie. But this plotline also spins out of control: At the end, Napoleon’s friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) becomes temporary mayor because, as high school class president, he is next in line of succession. He leads the townspeople into battle against the escaped ligers.
Now and then, the writers score with a line that recalls the film’s comic spirit. Napoleon tells Kip, “I found, like, a scientist’s secret diary and it said if you burp, sneeze, fart and yawn at the same time, you explode.” Kip replies, “Scientists don’t keep diaries — they keep logs.”
The voice actors, especially Heder, Ramirez and Ruell, cut through the clutter. Every time Napoleon says, “Gosh!” or “Dang it!” fans will smile.
But the creators seem to have decided that because animation allows for more action, they had to go for it. They could have learned from “King of the Hill,” which is visually similar but doesn’t veer off on tangents that clash with its comic sensibility.
In the movie, Napoleon tells a schoolmate that he spent the summer with his uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines, which he had to shoot because they kept attacking his cousins. In this series, that could be an episode summary.
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