What can we learn from Napoleon Dynamite 20 Years Later?

Last Updated on April 27, 2024

So, it’s been twenty years since the release of director Jared Hess’ breakout debut comedy- Napoleon Dynamite. Last week, we did some great anniversary interviews, and this week we’re taking a deeper dive into the meaning behind this cult classic. On paper, this is a movie about the eponymous Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), a dorky high-school kid, sporting a red fro and moon boots, from a small town in Idaho town (Preston, Idaho, to be exact) who helps his best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) when he decides to run for class president while looking for love and dealing with his creepy Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) and oddball brother Kip (Aaron Ruell). But, if I believed that was all this movie was, I’d be talking about something else- but here we are.

Now, this is a movie that most everybody has either seen or at the very least is familiar with. And, while I agree that not every movie has to be some deep and robust metaphor for life and the human condition, I do think that there is an interesting angle for Napoleon Dynamite that hasn’t necessarily been explored yet.

What happens in the movie? A dorky high school kid wants friends but doesn’t have any, he meets an exchange student who kind of has no choice but to hang out with him and they become pals. Napoleon spends days drawing while living with his wacky grandma and equally awkward brother. When grandma goes on an ATV trip to the sand dunes and gets injured, Napoleon’s uncle comes to house-sit while she recovers, and his arrival turns Napoleon’s world upside down… and in the end, the kid emerges as a new kind of hero.

Napoleon Dynamite is a lot of things but the movie and the character are never fake. Never putting on a prettier face to sell us something or make an impression- but that doesn’t mean that we can’t love it for what it is. And at the end of the day- through Napoleon’s struggle to make friends, then his struggle to keep those friends while his uncle ruins everybody’s life’s and eats all their steak, to eventually realizing that the true meaning of the story and the key to being happy in your own awkward and never perfect life- is just to keep being yourself and let the people that accept you find you in time- and eventually, even in the smallest towns, and even with the strangest people, everybody can make a friend.    

Watching this movie as an adult, I think I see Napoleon in a more earnest and more self-aware way. When I was 12 and laughing my head off at the sight of Napoleon dancing to Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat” or nearly piss myself every time I look at that horrific drawing of Trisha- I look at those moments now as funny, but also reassuring. These incredibly hard to watch scenes of awkward connections and dry moments between even drier characters lets me see that what Jared Hess wanted to spend $400,000 and a summer of intense heat and shooting schedules to tell us is that it’s okay to embarrass yourself, and it’s okay to be embarrassed. In fact, it’s better that way- because when it all comes down to it, we all just want to find our own slice of the world- and we all want our friends, no matter how few or how many, to be real and genuine friends. And maybe the only to find that, is to be real and genuine ourselves.

Jared Hess wrote the screenplay for Napoleon Dynamite with his wife Jerusha Hess. The film was produced by Jeremy Coon, Chris Wyatt, and Sean Covel, and was released by Fox Searchlight.