I’ve written voluminously about
the peculiar magnetism of Napoleon Dynamite. Suffice to say that if for some
reason you haven’t yet seen the film, then jumping with two feet into
the middle of its rapturous cult reception can be a bit overwhelming.
Jon Heder plays the squinty-eyed title character, and even if every
future role he ever does demystifies or devalues slightly the
wonked-out uniqueness of his
grade-A nerd petulance on display here, it
still won’t diminish the idiosyncratic charm of the movie as a whole.
Napoleon Dynamite,
like all lasting comedies,
locates its humor in universal conditions
and circumstances told from a very specific and canted point of view.
Co-written by director Jared Hess (the forthcoming
Nacho Libre)
and his wife Jerusha, the film centers around an Idaho teenage outcast
and the unlikely bonds he forges with a new transfer student and an
equally awkward girl.
Mirroring its clumsy inelegance is the unlikely,
little-engine-that-could story of the film itself. Made for just
$400,000 in 2003, it was an under-the-radar selection at the Sundance
Film Festival before becoming a hot ticket, getting snapped up by Fox
Searchlight and grossing over $44 million over the summer of 2004 on
the strength of savvy low-fi marketing and scintillating word-of-mouth.
It’s a behind-the-scenes story that gets fleshed out — some might even
argue overly stretched out — and roundly celebrated in the new,
exhaustive, two-disc set
Napoleon Dynamite: Like, the Best Special Edition Ever!
The original DVD release of Napoleon Dynamite featured both
full screen and widescreen presentations of the film, an audio
commentary track with Hess, Heder and producer Jeremy Coon, deleted
scenes with optional commentary, MTV promos for the movie, a still
photo gallery and several other featurettes. In short, it was certainly
no slouch, burned-off release. Diehard fans, though, will still spark
to the new inclusions. This set shaves off the full screen presentation
while retaining the first audio commentary track and adding a
sparkling, fun second one with costars Aaron Ruell, Jon Gries, Efren
Ramirez and Tina Majorino. In addition to the aforementioned fare, the
short film Peluca and the kitschy The Wedding of the Century
add-on (a rib-nudging bit filmed for late theatrical appendage and MTV
run) are also carried over from the initial release, along with nicely
offbeat menu screens keeping with the film’s tone.
The new bits, then, include
all-new outtakes and additional extended
scenes, never-before-seen audition clips, an on-location
featurette/diary from the shooting of the film (notable for
more
footage of Uncle Rico’s famous steak toss) and “Napoleon and Pedro
Sightings,” which collects cast and
in-character appearances on shows
like Saturday Night Live and the
MTV Movie Awards. The biggest supplement, though, is the hour-long documentary
World Premiere: Jared Hess,
aptly billed as a nonlinear look at the director’s journey from before
Sundance all the way up to and beyond the commercial release of the
movie. While on the one hand full of some fascinating snippets,
its
direct-address, crisis-of-confidence ramblings can get kind of
repetitive, and it also shows Hess to be a nitpicking director prone to
stiflingly arbitrary line readings. An upgrade isn’t an absolute must
given the superb quality of the first release, but this is the
definitive version of
Napoleon Dynamite — it’s hard to imagine there’s anything else left.
A (Movie) A (Disc) 
