I don’t know what to make of the film Napoleon Dynamite. It’s supposed to be a classic movie of phenomenal proportions, but it rankles in my head, and I have a hard time believing that the film was able to affect pop culture so much that even kids who didn’t know who Napoleon Dynamite was wore clothing inspired by the movie.

It’s the supreme example of the classic geek; Jon Heder’s portrayal of the titular character is almost legendary (I couldn’t even bear to look at him all the time; the nerdiness was too painful, at times). The comedy is offbeat - this is probably the nicest adjective I could find for it - and all the characters are either superrealistic representations of a given stereotype, or flat as a glass of water, which was in my estimate intentional to put across a point (it did, it did truth be told, but it wasn’t the characters themselves that I found problematic with the film).

The film starts to suffer when the lack of a story becomes apparent. At the beginning, there’s a gigantic lack of story, relying on the anti-slapstick humor and mannerisms of Napoleon and his family, and later with the addition of Deb and the enigmatic (sic) Pedro to drive the film along. It’s like the writers and director decided to spend the entire first half of the film to establish character and relationships. Which isn’t a bad thing, except that with the experimental style of comedy used by the film, it ended up being . . . well, it got boring. Some segments to build character, such as Uncle Rico’s repeated attempts to film himself throwing footballs to nobody in particular. It was hilariously puzzling at first, but as it progressed, it just got sad and, well, repetitive. Some of the empty scenes that show just how much of a strangeling Napoleon was could have been trunctuated to give the entire movie a bit more meat.

When the class presidential race is introduced, the story finally picks up the pace. Earlier in the film, some animosity had been established between the dorks of the school and the cool group; this tension - or the semblance of it - comes to a head when Pedro decides to run against Summer, one of the popular kids. At the very apex of the movie, the liberating qualities of the dubious heroes are shown, culminating in what could be the most interesting dance sequence I have ever seen. That was a spoiler, in case you didn’t notice.

At it’s best, Napoleon Dynamite could be considered one of the most honest slice-of-life films there is in the available market, but the fact that it teems with oddities that your average moviegoer probably wouldn’t understand, or a plot that isn’t even linear due to the lack of a more coherent, bigger story are two pretty evident weaknesses that keep the film from becoming more than a passing attraction, at least to me.

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