Napoleon Dynamite series hits five years too late

I just don't get "Napoleon Dynamite". I've spent over six years trying to get it but I just don't. I can see such an offbeat film earning a cult fan base but the pop culture phenomenon that it grew into baffles me to this day. It barely would have justified a tv series back at the height of its popularity but I really question the necessity of an animated series 7 years after its release.

Picking up essentially right where the movie left off, "Napoleon Dynamite" continues the life story of the awkward teenaged titular character as he goes through his zany life with his deadpan cast of friends. Yes, that's right; unlike the film, the animated adventures of Napoleon are zany.

Apparently somewhere between the dry, sarcasm laden, deadpan movie, series and film creator Jared Hess decided to provide the show with moments of exaggerated and cartoony slapstick. A decision that comes across as rather jarring when compared to the rest of the show and its source material. I may not have particularly enjoyed "Napoleon Dynamite" as a film but I understood that it had a very specific style of humor that apparently did click with its audience. Therefore, on behalf of them and myself, I found this inclusion to be a rather odd and frankly, irritating.

I do have to give the production team credit however. The animation is solid and whenever the show actually does do something inventive with it, it does look good. The character models seem to be a generally fair animated translation of the actors respectively portraying them in the movie and it generally stayed consistent throughout the two episode premiere.

The entire cast of the film returns to voice their respective characters for the series. Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez reprise their roles as Napoleon and Pedro respectively giving banter that you would swear was lifted directly from the movie. Despite my bias against the film however, I would be lying if I didn't admit that a few moments of banter between the two didn't result in some of the few genuine chuckles that I got throughout the premiere.

The series, furthermore had several incidental moments in between that elicited chuckles out of me. Alas, like the film before it, the premiere ultimately never gave me a single good hard laugh. It was never exactly unpleasant, but there's just something inherently annoying about leaving a comedy without ever laughing.

All my criticisms aside, however, I will say this. Despite the slightly higher level of slapstick, and the generally ludicrous plots of each episode, the show does actually do a decent job of capturing the feel of the film that it's based on at several points. If you're a fan of the "Napoleon Dynamite", maybe you'll like it but as somebody who is not, this just feels like more of the same, despite it's more colorful packaging.