Napolean Dynamite -- 2004 -- PG

"He's out to prove that he's got nothing to prove." I was warned prior to watching this one that it was a film about nothing, and not being a fan of Seinfeld, I feared going into something about nothing. Sure enough, it was mostly about nothing, but it was also an amusing journey getting nothing.

The basic plot involves a kid named Napolean Dynamite (big surprise) who struggles to get through life (mainly high school) given his wacky surroundings. He runs across a variety of different characters including his business-minded yet trapped in the past uncle, his chat room-obsessed brother, a quiet hispanic kid who wants to be class president, and a girl who runs a glamour studio out of her house to make money for college (to name a few). Scenes showing us the various aspects of these characters are strung together in chronological order showing us how they develop as the story unfolds while showing each character's individual plot. The primary plots Napolean gets a piece of are: the rise and fall of his uncle's door to door sales business(es); the hispanic kid, Pedro, running for class president; Napolean's brother, Kip, carrying on a relationship with a mysterious girl he met in a chat room; a slow-burning fuse of a relationship between Napolean and Deb; and the antics and interactions of Napolean's home life between himself, Kip, and their uncle.

The movie is a comic drama meaning that the plot is driven by the characters and their relationships with each other and their environment. Napolean is the central character connecting all of these things together in a loose fashion, and while the movie is amusing in a variety of moments, it's also a ton of relatively short scenes, which serves to drag the movie's pacing way down. By the time you hit 30 minutes, it feels like a lot longer and you're still wondering where all this is going, and if it's going anywhere at all.

That's really the only real weakness here. The characters are fairly well drawn and consistent. The situations are routinely funny in their content and execution. Everything unfolds very logically, and parts of it are a lot of fun to watch. I think if the scenes were a little less deadpan in their delivery, it might have been a bit more exciting, but this is like watching a movie with Ben Stein's relatives. Occasionally, there is a moment of upbeatness from someone, but not that often.

It works out to be a mixed bag of a movie; one that you want to keep watching to see what happens next while checking your watch to see when ninety minutes are finally up. It is a little different from the norm, but it needed to draw us in a little more so we could handle the pacing a little better.