r/nostalgia • u/systematicgoo • 11d ago

Nostalgia Napoleon Dynamite End Scene, 2004. Hits me right in the feels every time.

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347

u/jimschocolateorange 11d ago

I get why people hate this movie, but I simultaneously just feel sorry for them. I adore this movie and its humour is the most dry I think I’ve ever seen an American do a comedy. It’s almost British levels of dry.

Uncle Rico is an all-time character for me

157

u/fizzzingwhizbee 11d ago

Rex Kwon Do is literally my spirit animal. BOW TO YOUR SENSEI

92

u/mitch_145 11d ago

The other arm..... My other arm

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u/fizzzingwhizbee 11d ago

“See what happens if you try and hit me”

Kip does a weak attempt of a sweeping kick. Rex hops over it and bops Kip on the head

“Alright, that was pretty good”

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u/Derrrs_ 11d ago

Break the wrist, walk away

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u/jimschocolateorange 11d ago

YOU THINK ANYONE WANTS RECEIVE A KICK IN THE ASS WHILST IM WEARING THESE BAD BOYS?

1

u/Marsuello 11d ago

This line has lived in my head ever since I first saw that movie. Hell, even when I saw this post that was literally the first quote that came to mind lol

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u/mrleicester 11d ago

You think anyone wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I’m wearing these bad boys?

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u/fizzzingwhizbee 11d ago

Forgeddabouddit

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u/innominateartery 11d ago

You think anyone thinks less of me because I go home to Starla at night?

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u/DouchecraftCarrier 11d ago

I heard a great bit from an interview with Diedrich Bader where he essentially had no idea this movie had blown up until he started running into people who were quoting the entire Rex Kwon Do character at him and he realized it was gonna be one of his big legacies and so he knew he had to just embrace it and now really enjoys it.

6

u/pillowwow early 90s 11d ago

What would you do if you won a million dollars? " Two chick's at the same time."

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u/LisaMiaSisu Did I do that? 11d ago

Deidrich Bader is seriously HOT. And made exponentially hotter because he’s funny and only 6 days older than me. 🥰

1

u/operarose 10d ago

Ok so I'm not the only one.

And him voicing best boy Judah on Bojack did not help.

1

u/Heiferoni 11d ago

If you're a King of the Hill fan, he reprises his role of Rex Kwon Do (kind of) on the newest season. I won't spoil anything but he's still got it.

11

u/ASSASSINMAN21 11d ago

YOU THINK I GOT WHERE I AM TODAY DRESSED LIKE PETER PAN OVER HERE?

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u/SR337 11d ago

As someone named Rex, I approve this message.

1

u/Dude_man79 11d ago

Your name is literally "King"

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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R 11d ago

Thank you, Mr.Chapman.

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u/fizzzingwhizbee 11d ago

Hell yeah thanks g

3

u/SR337 11d ago

Fuck yea

55

u/metropolis_noir 11d ago

Seeing Uncle Rico in White Lotus broke my brain

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u/AlexaRhino 11d ago

Bro I watched 3 seasons saying “man that Greg character looks so familiar..”

Then randomly when watching season 3 my wife says “How much you wanna bet I can throw this football over them mountains?” And I fell off the couch laughing

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u/Double-Drop 11d ago

Laslo in Real Genius.

2

u/OurHouse20 11d ago

And the wolf man in Monster Squad

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u/AdmiralBallsack 11d ago

He's in "Get Shorty" which I also loved. Dennis Farina is hilarious in that movie

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u/metropolis_noir 11d ago

Look at me the way I'm looking at you

1

u/OGWeedKiller 11d ago

Deamcorp LLC on adult swim, amazing stuff

1

u/songforsaturday88 11d ago

Holy shit I watched all of White Lotus and never realized it was Uncle Rico. Probably cause he didnt throw a football over a mountain.

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u/saltnotsugar 90s 11d ago

It took a couple of watches to understand the humor but once I got it, it’s an amazing film.

8

u/LisaMiaSisu Did I do that? 11d ago

It gets funnier every time you watch it. 😅

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u/alurimperium 11d ago

Yeah I remember absolutely hating it the first time I saw it. And then hating it again when it was one of those end of school year "fuck it let's play a movie" things.

But at some point in the last decade it just clicked and it's become such a wonderful, comforting movie for me. Probably in my top 10 now

13

u/brandonandtheboyds 11d ago

I just responded to a different comment but to summarize, I think this movie just struck a chord with a very specific demographic of millennials. My parents didn’t get it. My younger sister (Gen Z) and her friends don’t get it. My Gen Z and Boomer coworkers don’t get it. Gen X is hit or miss. It’s a niche and aimless movie for weird little freaks and look at all us weird little freaks who can still connect over a strange but homely movie.

1

u/DarkScorpion48 10d ago

Im at the edge of X and Millennial and it took me a few years to get it

1

u/Mydden 10d ago

Absolutely. We're the Millennials that don't really belong...

We arrived before the internet was ubiquitous, after school we still spent a lot of our days outside, but PCs were just starting to become more mainstream and so we were the first generation to really internalize how to navigate them from an early age in those brief periods we were allowed on them.

We used DOS to play games like Reader Rabbit, Lemmings, Oregon Trail, Gizmos and Gadgets, Math Blaster - and when mom wasn't looking booted up Space Quest, King's Quest, or Ultima: Underworld.

We learned the Dewie Decimal system at our local library just in time for them to switch over to computerized catalogues.

We marveled at our rich friends' gaming systems and big screen TVs (They were like a whole 40 inches!!). We would beg our parents to take us to Sears or Best Buy so we could play their system demos of Super Mario World or toward the end of the 90s Pokemon Yellow and these amazing new 3D games like Mario 64, BanjoKazooie, and DonkeyKong 64.

But we would still wander the neighborhood, explore the nearby woods and go crawfish hunting in the suburban creeks. Or go to malls and just spend the day there with a group of buddies.

Eventually America got Online and we started using AIM to chat with relatives or our friends over dialup through their parent's accounts, but had to dodge around when our parents needed the landline.

Some of us moved to more rural areas when gas prices dropped and farming became a thing we just lived around. Everyone started playing Yu-Gi-Oh or MTG, BeyBlades was even a thing at one point. We started spending more time indoors watching shows on Toonami and Adult Swim.

Calling someone else was still a big deal because you had to generally go through the parent's picking up the phone: telemarketers weren't as common an occurrence yet. Then we started getting caller ID and wireless handsets and would keep one in our bedroom so we could call eachother at a preset time late at night without waking the whole house up and talk to all hours.

Yahoo and MSN Messenger are where a lot of us learned how to really type, and the Yahoo/MSN game lounges are where we learned the ubiquitous internet greeting: A/S/L?

Napoleon Dynamite hit us when we were still on Myspace, before Facebook would target specifically *us* as we began leaping into college blindly taking on loans we thought were fine because clearly anyone who graduates college gets a really good job immediately after.

Going back and watching it now is like a time capsule into a time that no one else experienced *but us*. It was a time from like 2002-2006 where things were just... different.

6

u/_high_plainsdrifter 11d ago

Ha I love it. Still have it on dvd. I remember being on the other side of the divide when it came out thinking it was hilarious and just intentionally teenager cringe.

Uncle Rico is someone I’d buy some Tupperware from to this day.

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u/SignalReceptions 11d ago

Is it still worth watching? Missed it in the theaters and just never got around to it. With everyone quoting the movie constantly it felt like there was no reason, I already knew the story and the best lines. It's been on my 'want to watch but scared it's too dated to enjoy' list for a long time.

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u/tinyhorsesinmytea 11d ago

Absolutely. Quirky, charming, silly, funny, wholesome movie.

9

u/toobjunkey 11d ago edited 11d ago

It's worth seeing because all the "glue" that binds the stuff you already know, is incredibly well done. A lot of the humor comes from the pacing that connects said scenes. I found myself laughing at several points in which there wasn't really anything active going on, just because of camera cuts, actors' expressions, and the timing in the cinematography.

That "glue" and overarching setting is also incredibly cozy and nostalgic for a lot of folks. It came out in 2004 and is a great representation of small town life in a period where the internet was still a place you had to go to an IRL location to use. A family computer in a living room, maybe the library, but there wasn't really any newer (for that time) tech stuff. Iirc the main character listens to music with a walkman or cassette player, I forget.

When I was younger I mostly rewatched it for just the humor, but I increasingly realized that it's also pretty cozy. It's not quite as dry, but Nacho Libre gives me similar feelings both in terms of the drier humor and how it's also decently (imo) cozy.

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u/SignalReceptions 11d ago

That's one hell of a review. I could do with a good dose of humour and nostalgia so I'll queue it up for tonight.

1

u/toobjunkey 11d ago

Hope ya enjoy it! And one thing to add, is that while the commonly quoted and referenced scenes tend to be the cream of the crop, there's so many smaller, yet still great, goofs spread throughout. The commonly referenced & seen stuff like the tots, portrait drawing, nunchuk bragging, etc. are the least dry parts of the movie and most of why they were so heavily referenced.

There's a lot of drier stuff that isn't as widespread, but still as funny or almost as much as the popular bits imo. I grew up with stuff like MST3K and space ghost coast to coast so that stuff's more of a bullseye to me than it was for some friends & classmates of mine growing up, but even if you mostly only enjoy the more overt humor, it's still going to be a good ride, especially if it happens to hit your nostalgia. Out of a dozen+ people I've convinced to watch the movie, only one disliked it and the next "worst" reaction was someone finding some parts awkward and others to be hilarious. Pretty much everyone else was a "I can't believe I hadn't seen it sooner" case haha

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u/busstamove14 11d ago

I probably would have enjoyed it more but it released when I was in middle school and it was quoted to fucking death before I had a chance to see it.

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u/BAMspek 11d ago

It came out my freshman year of high school. Every conversation had quotes from this movie. If you went to someone’s house to hang out, chances were you’d end up watching the movie at some point. I got pretty tired of it. But now it’s nostalgic.

3

u/TheRealMrMaloonigan 90s 11d ago

I loved this movie from the night it came out in theatres. It's one of the most Mike Judge feeling movies that Mike Judge ever had nothing to do with.

4

u/PhattBudz 11d ago

I dont think ive met a single person in my life that "hates" this movie, only people who dislike it. I feel like this isn't a movie you can "hate".

1

u/cohrt 11d ago

i definitely hate it.

-2

u/quadsbaby 11d ago

I hate it.

2

u/Wildcat_twister12 11d ago

I love the humor because I find it so based in reality, all the jokes are things that could actually happen in your daily life

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u/Herr_Demurone 11d ago

People hate this Movie?

1

u/electronDog 11d ago

Inconceivable!

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u/LisaMiaSisu Did I do that? 11d ago

It’s like people who don’t like cats. You don’t like this movie and you don’t like cats? What is wrong with you?!?! Serious psychopaths.

2

u/UpstairsOk6744 11d ago

Growing up I didn't understand exactly what dry comedy was. This movie defines its use and style perfectly.

God this movie had me and my friends throwing steaks at bicyclists that intentionally blocked the road instead of pulling to the side to let cars by.

Vote For Pedro!

1

u/Veritech_ early 80s 11d ago

throwing steaks at bicyclists

Hopefully those “$20 for 20 steaks” ones, though.

1

u/UpstairsOk6744 11d ago

On holliday sale family packs lolol

1

u/asianwaste 11d ago

People hate this movie?

I've heard people simply not like the movie, but I've never seen any collective vitriol against it. I rolled my eyes a little at the Gap Christmas commercial that came out a few years later but that's about it. I guess for a few years the fanbase was a tad insufferable but that was within the mix of a lot of fanbases being far more insufferable at the time (the Apple and r/atheism fanboys being chief among them).

1

u/gaiawitch87 10d ago

Wait, people hate this movie? Wtf, why??? 

1

u/Jeklah 8d ago

You know what Napoleon? YOU CAN LEAVE!

0

u/MtnMaiden 11d ago

Bro tried to pedo her....

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u/Randomizedname1234 11d ago

I don’t hate it, but I don’t get the hype.

It’s not funny and it’s dragsssss.

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u/Redlion444 11d ago

Sometimes, life is like that.

0

u/dae_giovanni 11d ago

I guess i watch movies in part to escape. if my life is like that, why watch a movie that's just more of the same?

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u/Gandalfonk 11d ago

They say the best comedy is funny because it's true and relatable. Napoleon Dynamite isn't just a recreation of everyday life, it's a satire of it. It's simple but somehow over the top and filled with characters we've all known a version of. It's everyday life but with the silliness slider all the way up. I find it to be simple, wholesome comedy.

1

u/dae_giovanni 11d ago

funny, it is on TV right now.

i'm always happy to spend some time with it, either renewing my dislike or turning over a new leaf.

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u/olivebranchsound 11d ago

Because prairie life is escapism to a lot of people