Film: Napoleon Dynamite and the limitations of urban(e) critics

Most of the "Napoleon Dynamite" reviews I have read mentioned that the film doesn't have a strong plot. So I wasn't surprised when I saw the capsule headline for Carla Meyer's San Francisco Chronicle review: "There's no cohesive story."

However, when I read the full review, I did find it interesting that Meyer accuses Jared and Jerusha Hess, the film's writers, of trying to make an '80s period piece a la John Hughes.

Her specific objections:

1. "The comic setups are rather geek-movie conventional for a picture that keeps trying to announce its differentness. 'Napoleon' is unique only if you gauge uniqueness by an inability to tell the era in which a film is set."

2. "Napoleon's Idaho high school classmates seem to be living in 2004, but they slow-dance to Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time.'"

3. "The filmmakers want to evoke the 'Sixteen Candles' era of geekdom without committing to a period movie or acknowledging what's happened in the intervening years. Napoleon's three-piece, 1970s thrift-store suit was unfashionable in 1984, but today it looks like something a San Francisco hipster might wear." (Carla Meyer. "'Napoleon' falls too much in love with its own nerdiness." San Francisco Chronicle: June 18, 2004.)

It would seem Meyer doesn't know rural Idaho very well. Sure her reactions are valid (for her). And I'm sure they reflect the likely reactions of some of her readers. But with this review Meyer proves something that I'm sure Motley Vision readers may have already suspected -- there are limitations to being an urban(e) critic.