I'm not sure why the Wall Street Journal critic picked this film as one of its top ten for 2004.  Jon Heder plays the lead role as a slack-mouthed geeky guy who seems to be unusually incompetent in life.  It's a high school venue even though Napoleon looks ten years too old for high school … well, maybe only five years too old. 

            Over the last couple of weeks I heard a statistician interviewed on KQED who quoted the U.S. education ranking to be below most of the world's other industrial countries, I learned that California's education has fallen into 40-something place, one of the lowest of all the States and today I read that a local Santa Rosa high school failed to meet the Fed test score requirements.  Watching this film, I can believe all of it.  The student emphasis in this fictitious high school was on everything else but education.  And this more or less supports the statistician's information that K-8 compares favorably with the rest of the world's education, but high school takes a dive.  I'd apologize for the soapbox if this weren't such a disaster involving our most important resource.

            Back to the film, it didn't really go anywhere.  It was sort-of-a character study of one ostracized student, but there wasn't anyone, including the protagonist, that I could identify with.  Napoleon does one heroic act and I thought it was the only redeeming scene in the film.  Unfortunately, there is nothing in his previous behavior or ability that would substantiate the act, and that one scene was not enough to make the whole film worthwhile. 

            The director, Jared Hess, collaborated with his wife, Jerusha to write the screenplay.  She also did the costume design.  Heder and the Hess' all attend Brigham Young University.  This is Jared's first full-length film direction effort.  What they have portrayed scares me about our future.  Maybe that's why the WSJ put it in the top ten.

            Reviewed February 17, 2005

            MPAA: Rated PG for thematic elements and language.