Napoleon Dynamite

Director: Jared Hess

2004 / 96min / 35mm

When Idaho high schooler Napoleon’s grandmother has to take time to rehab after breaking her coccyx, he and his brother Kip find themselves under the dubious “guardianship” of their Uncle Rico, a run-to-seed former high school jock who fills his days plotting get-rich-quick schemes, tooling around in his orange Santana, and making videos of himself tossing the pigskin. Delusional blowhard Rico, played to faded alpha perfection by John Gries, offers the perfect foil to Jon Heder’s defiantly dorky Napoleon in this genuine out-of-nowhere cult classic, “an epic, magisterially observed pastiche on all-American geekhood.” [The Village Voice]