Drama
The Acolyte
The Acolyte takes Star Wars fans into a time when the Empire didn’t exist. But that doesn’t make everything rosy—in that galaxy or on this show.
In 2004, a cheaply made, quirky little movie filmed in southern Idaho trundled out to a few theaters. And then it trundled out to a few more. Before the entertainment industry could say “sweet,” the silly little flick had earned $46 million, spawned a cult following and generated an untold number of “Vote for Pedro” T-shirts.
The film had skills, it turned out. And it called itself Napoleon Dynamite.
Seven years later, Napoleon’s back for an animated encore on Fox. Hoping to catch llama spit in a bottle twice (and, for anyone familiar with llama saliva, that’s a tricky thing to do), its creators have tried to duplicate—or at least create passable forgeries of—all the elements that made Napoleon such a surprise success in the first place.
Most of the characters—Napoleon, Kip, Pedro, Grandma—are the same. And they’re voiced by the same actors who starred in the movie. The film’s creators are onboard for the project, as are the writers (Jared and Jerusha Hess).
But something got lost in translation, as we kinda knew it would. Napoleon Dynamite the movie, after all, had the luxury of time. It could ease its way into punchlines and quietly milk its clever sense of incredulity. In a half-hour comedy—an animated comedy, at that—there’s no time to let audiences ease into anything, much less the strange, off-kilter vibe of Prescott Senior High School. Everything is go, go, go—a big-city mentality trying to somehow replicate small-town Idaho.
How could you protect a dollop or two of quirky humor in the context of an ongoing TV series anyway? If you see it too often, it ceases to be quirky, and thus it ceases to be funny. If you visit a woman who puts cats on her head, you might leave thinking, “My, that was strange,” and gleefully recount the story for days. If the lady in question happens to be an in-town aunt of yours, though, those cats become just a tiresome part of the Sunday dinner landscape.
The final failure in the replication department are the film’s PG sensibilities. Oh, the cartoon’s not terrible, mind you—not compared to the content found in wildly popular and extraordinarily problematic animated shows like Family Guy or Beavis and Butt-head. The Simpsons would be a fairer comparison in terms of content. But considering the fact that part of the film’s original charm was its un-ironic sense of innocence, the TV-14-level of crass here is both disappointing and destructive. There’s a little calm-Idaho left in this remake … but not enough.
“Scandronica Love”
Students at Prescott Senior High are electronically paired up by the Scandronica 3000. The result? Mismatches, of course, jokes about promise rings and a potential mother-in-law trying to force a Botox injection on Deb (Napoleon’s friend).
Kip practices “contact juggling,” leading Uncle Rico to gasp, “Are you in league with Lucifer?” Later, the two make a commercial in which Rico (pretending to be a little boy) asks Kip how much he’d charge to entertain at his baptism. Grandma dreams of skinny-dipping with Merle Haggard and warns relatives to leave the wading pool she’s in: “I’m gonna do some stretches you might not wanna see.” Pedro strips off his shirt and Napoleon is seen in his underwear. Again.
Napoleon fights with his martial arts instructor. Kip and Rico are chased out of a bar by gun-firing patrons. Napoleon is hit in the groin, blurting out a crude term for testicles. Napoleon’s girlfriend says she wants to learn to be American by talking behind people’s backs and throwing up in limos. Napoleon marvels at Deb’s honesty. “You know how we’re supposed to pay for our school lunches?” he says. “She actually does!” Characters say “freaking,” “heck,” “douche bag” and “dang.”
“Thundercone”
Kip throws chicken skin on Napoleon’s forehead, causing a serious case of acne. Napoleon tries to clear it up via a banned pimple medication—and quickly finds out why it was banned: Among its side effects are lust and unbridled rage.
Not that he’s mad about that. But he is mad about everything else. “Sweet! My rage has never been unbridled!” he says right before crushing a sink in the school bathroom. Then he starts beating up practically everyone he sees and winds up stealing Kip’s fickle new girlfriend (whom Kip wooed with spray-on abs). The two brothers find themselves squaring off in a not-so-secret fight club cage match … but the acne medication wears off, and the fight degenerates into much slapping and hair pulling.
Grandma tries to grotesquely pop Napoleon’s pimples. Kip’s girlfriend falls for anyone who’s “ripped,” even a muscular woman at one point. She lustily licks Napoleon’s temporary tattoo. A child punches another kid in a modified game of Duck-Duck-Goose. We see grandma in her bra and Napoleon in his underwear. Characters say “dang,” “crap,” “jeez” and “bad-a.” Someone calls Napoleon and Kip “pussy willows.” Grandma makes a quip about a past girlfriend of Kip’s, who was apparently made out of pipe cleaners. Napoleon makes a crude allusion to Kip’s lack of a love life.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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