Blu-ray Movie Reviews

"Napoleon Dynamite" is a new kind of hero, complete with a tight red 'fro, sweet moon boots, and skills that can't be topped. Napoleon spends his days drawing mythical beasts, duking it out with his brother, Kip, and avoiding his scheming Uncle Rico. When two new friends enter Napoleon's life - shy Deb and mustachioed Pedro - the trio launches a campaign to elect Pedro for class president and make the student body's wildest dreams come true. But if Pedro is to beat stuck-up Summer, Napoleon will have to unleash his secret weapon.

This film had an obvious affect on pop culture as we know it today and a lot of how Hollywood has delivered their comedies in the last few years. It is still a laugh riot and Heder is absolutely pitch perfect as the lead. There are so many classic lines in this film and its one that doesn’t seem to get old with repeat viewings. It is really great to see Fox putting out these great comedies lately, they haven’t been catering to their independents much in the last year but this last month has been great.

The video presentation is a bit disappointing. While it doesn’t fall nearly as short as Sideways it has a lot of similarities. The image has a washed out appearance that can be quite soft. Contrast leans toward white a bit too much and black levels are elevated which hurts dimensionality. Film grain can be a bit excessive and some minor print wear is obvious. Colors appear slightly muted but this seems to be the intention of the director. Depth of image isn’t bad but overall this Blu-ray doesn’t look much better than the previous DVD aside from the lack of obvious compression artifacts.

The DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is good but the soundtrack has an odd balance. The soundtrack selections can be a bit loud in comparison to the rest of the mix which had me reaching for the remote to turn things down a few times. Subtle ambiance is captured nicely and the surrounds had more activity than I would expect for this type of film. Dialogue sounds very natural in tone and timbre but can be drowned out slightly by the other elements.

Fox includes plenty of extras on this one. You get a pair of audio commentaries along with quite a few production features. Some deleted scenes are included along with a look at the pop culture influence on the film. A short film by the director is also included.

This is a great catalog entry for Fox and I’m glad to see it on Blu-ray. I was hoping for a bit more from the A/V presentation but given the low budget production of the film it is hard to say how much better it could have looked.