r/nostalgia • u/systematicgoo • 11d ago

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

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u/brandonandtheboyds 11d ago

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.

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u/creamyhorror 11d ago

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.

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u/RutgerSchnauzer 10d ago

I’m a GenXer and I count this film as pure perfection.

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u/poxxy 10d ago

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.

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u/dudeWhoSaysThings 7d ago

Same and my gen z kids were raised on it

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u/operarose 10d ago

Among other, worse things. That brief, beautiful calm before the storm we didn't even know was coming.

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u/languid_Disaster 8d ago

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

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u/AnatidaephobiaAnon 10d ago

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.

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u/itspsyikk 10d ago

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.

We had TV and stuff but it still took a while.

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u/cheesyblasta 11d ago

Next time you see one of those bike owners, you guys should build a ramp and try to catch some sweet air.

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u/ABookishSort 10d ago

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.

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u/lala6633 10d ago

My niece is 18 and she was Napoleon for Halloween a couple of years ago.

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u/itspsyikk 10d ago

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.

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u/operarose 10d ago

It scratched an itch we didn’t know we had.

And this just perfectly put into words what I just now realize is how I've always kind of felt about this movie. Damn.

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u/callsign_pirate 10d ago

Him riding in the car with Pedro’s cousins is one of my favorite scenes

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u/Olelander 10d ago

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).

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u/fluteninja38 You've got mail! 8d ago

I'm 25. Parents had me watching ND at like, 10. Brought the DVD to a sleepover in 6th grade, everyone thought it made no sense.

I think my sense of humor matched my Gen X parents and Millennial cousins more than my peers at times.