Napoleon Dynamite Cartoon, Funny, Could Be Better

A scrawny, muscleless Napoleon Dynamite stands in front of his Grandma and Kip in is underwear, and exclaims (with as much exclamation as Napoleon can possibly have), “[Kip]‘s always trying to ruin my life ’cause he’s jealous of my sweet body.”

Before I start reviewing the Napoleon Dynamite cartoon – premiered on Fox at 8:30pm Sunday, I feel I should give you some background on myself, and my love for the Napoleon Dynamite movie.

When Napoleon Dynamite came out, and for about a year after, my friends and I would talk about the movie through entire lunchbreaks. We’d point out new little details we caught, or reminisce about a hilarious scene. I probably spent more time talking about Napoleon Dynamite than I did watching the movie. And I watched the movie a whole bunch. It changed my life.

I doubt the cartoon will change my life because the movie already did all the impact that anything of this nature could do. And the cartoon has written jokes where the movie was just funny because it represented high school awkwardness in general. Which is fine because I don’t think the cartoon could continue very long with only high school awkwardness.

There are some other discrepancies between the show and the film. Some of them aren’t a big deal, but I hope the show producers will end up changing some of them around.

First, Kip just didn’t seem like Kip. He was a smilar character, but I think his role was too prominent. Maybe the acting was just bad. Maybe the lines didn’t fit him quite right. I’m not exactly sure. I do know that I was extremely bummed to find that he’s not married to Lafawnduh. If you don’t remember, Kip and Lafawnduh got married after the film credits. Napoleon tamed a wild stallion as their wedding gift. Maybe the writers can write it in that Lafawnduh ends up coming back after she had a midlife crisis or something. I would really like to see that relationship continue.

Speaking of continuing relationships, Napoleon and Deb were sort of getting romantic toward the end of the movie. It was obvious there was something between them. In the cartoon, you can still tell they like each other, but Napoleon lost all that made him a gentlemen (“Are you drinking 1% because you think you’re fat? Because you could be drinking whole if you wanted.”). He won’t admit to Deb that he likes her or anything. I don’t mind this a whole bunch just yet. But it would be awesome if the two hold hands (or something) in the season finale.

As for my overall impression of the cartoon, I like it. It has the color and feel of the movie. This is a huge plus. The feel of the movie played a huge part in its greatness; the coordinated backgrounds, the beautiful blue skies, and the electro-pop music. And if the movie is completely forgotten, this is still a fantastic cartoon.

It brings me right back to those days when I would laugh for a whole hour about a single part of the film with my friends. I talked to those same friends about the cartoon. They didn’t catch the first episode, but they saw the second and loved it. I think they liked it more than I did. It’ll be fun to see if our conversations end up revolving around the cartoon like they did the movie.

Overall, I think the writers and the actors both need to stop trying so hard to be funny. They need to focus a bit more on the high school awkwardness, and let the cartoon be as chill as the movie. These people are sitting on gold. Let’s hope they do something good with it.

Related articles

• ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ Series Premiere: Napoleon And Kip Cage-Fight Over A Girl In ‘Thundercone’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• ‘Napoleon Dynamite: The Animated Series’: Jon Heder On The Differences Between The Movie And Cartoon (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ Star: Mormonism Keeps Me Raunch-Free (huffingtonpost.com)