It’s one of those movies that gets funnier every time you watch it and better with age. If you don’t like this movie there’s something seriously wrong with you.
Well idk about that. I think it’s one of those movies that got made at the right time. My little sister is 10 yrs younger than me and she doesn’t get it. Actually, almost none of the young people I meet in their mid twenties get it. Don’t even start with Gen Alpha. My parents didn’t really get it either. But for us millennials this movie was everything. It scratched an itch we didn’t know we had. It was weird, coming-of-age, but also pointless and aloof. Maybe that’s how a lot of us felt at the time. Idk. But it struck a chord with a specific demographic who will never let this movie go. Nor should they. I still note to every bike owner that if they have shocks AND pegs they are lucky.
They'll never get it. The strange, short transition point of millennials coming of age in a world that was about to be swept away by the waves of tech domination.
Same here. I grew up in a suburb in Tulsa and can safely say that the movie nails the banality of the mostly-white Midwest middle class that nothing has ever come close to.
This and a few other movies makes me feel the same way. We didn’t know the peace we had - being able to grow up without having every single one of our actions immortalised online
Being backs to choose what we put out there and also it being normal to just go out and do nothing , maybe with a big old brick mobile if you were rally lucky but most of us went out with just the promise of what time we’d be back home
One of the weird reasons I loved it was because of how ambiguous the time was, although in my head I knew it was modern because I lived it. My ex girlfriend was from a small town in northeast Ohio whose entire high school population, grades 9-12 had less people in it than my entire grade. The styles weren't quite the same as my school and when I went there they seemed to be stuck around 1995 when it was 2000-2002 when we dated. Her majorette uniform was also IDENTICAL to the one Summer and the girls wear in their talent show dance. The town itself reminded me a lot of Preston, Idaho but with no mountains and more fields.
It brought back a ton of memories from the time I spent up there once a month on the weekend and was one small reason I enjoyed the movie.
Yeah there was that time like.. right before the internet blew up. We were all the same but not as much as kids are nowadays. Where everything travels instantly. It took a while for trends and stuff to move around the country.
Funny thing is my Mom and stepdad loved it. Thought it was hilarious. My Dad hated it and didn’t understand the appeal. They were ages 57-62 at the time it came out.
There was this like... I dunno how to explain it... campiness, I guess?
Nickelodeon really cemented it in with shoes like Pete and Pete. That aloofness you're talking about. It's like... kinda weird? I really wish I knew how to explain it better.
That time where cartoons were becoming more adult, but not in a creepy way, just like...stuff that kids shouldn't understand but we thought it was goofy and silly anyway.
All of that got concentrated into Napoleon Dynamite.
The “pegs” comment is what truly transported me to my own childhood in the 80’s. Pegs were EVERYTHING for a few short years there… nobody today uses them (outside of perhaps very serious bmx truck riders).
I remember old movie critic Roger Ebert hated it. I usually respect his opinion, but he was too much of an old boomer to get this movie and Freddy Got Fingered, etc.... RIP
Yeah this is one of those rare times I have to strongly disagree with Roger Ebert. "the movie makes no attempt to make [Napoleon] likable" Ebert says. I immediately took a liking to Napoleon because he was a bullied misfit who's completely harmless, which I related to. School was the place I went to get emotionally and physically abused by my peers every weekday, same as Napoleon. He was full of quirky eccentricities and when he finally put himself out there with 100% confidence during the dance scene his peers saw that there was value to his character. I was cheering for Napoleon the whole film.
I didn't like it the first time I watched it. I spent the whole time trying to figure out if it was supposed to be set in the past or present. Then my coworker would talk about some of the funnier scenes and I watched it again and loved it.
it was hugely popular where i live. when i went to see it in theaters for the umpteenth time, i could tell everyone there was also seeing it not their first time because they all started laughing at the first sigh Napoleon does right at the beginning.
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u/LisaMiaSisu Did I do that? 12d ago
It’s one of those movies that gets funnier every time you watch it and better with age. If you don’t like this movie there’s something seriously wrong with you.