Quirkiness on speed dial
The cartoon version of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ on Fox picks up the pace.
One of the many charms of the 2004 indie film turned cult classic “Napoleon Dynamite” was the near-miraculous ability of writer-director Jared Hess and his cast to create characters that were equally human and cartoonish — at least a quarter of the movie is occupied by various versions of near-catatonic silence, oppressively echoed by the wide and weighty Idaho sky.
Those are two of several things lost in translation when Hess and his team reunited to create an animated series of the same name for Fox, and in this case “animated” applies in both senses of the word. Network TV has no time for satirical silence or non-sequitur scenes slowly compiled to establish tone and occasionally pass for plot. No, this “Napoleon Dynamite” is all go, go, go, racing, if nothing else, to keep pace with the host of other animated prime-time shows it joins. And forget any sense of place save Cartoonland.
But if Fox breaks faith with the sacred text, it has reunited the sacred cast, all of whom return to give voice and shape to the animated versions of the characters they helped create. With his frizzy hair and perpetually half-open mouth, Napoleon (Jon Heder) remains among the world’s geekiest teens, seconded only perhaps by his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) in his shorts and old man socks or equally glazed-eye best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez). Napoleon still lives with his salty Grandma (Sandy Martin) and dimwitted jock Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), and even Tina Majorino is back, as Deb, she of the painfully high side-ponytail and inexplicable affection for Napoleon.
Although intentionally barely there, the story of the movie left all the main characters a bit better off than they began — Kip, for example, had married his beloved Internet honey, Napoleon and Deb found each other. Unlike NBC’S “The Firm,” this film-turned-series isn’t, mercifully, a sequel or even a pre-quel; it exists in a sort of parallel universe to the film — Kip is still chatting up women on the Internet, including, in the first episode, one Misty (yes, that is Amy Poehler) who then falls for Napoleon but only after he is rage-enhanced via a dose of toxic zit cream. Which also leads him to enter the town’s not-so-secret fight club, under the tutelage of Rex Kwan Do (Dedrich Bader) wearing the same patriotic parachute pants he wore in the film version.
It’s a fairly manic plot for a character who once upon a time seemed unable to quite keep his eyes open, as is the one in the second episode, which involves a class-project computer that allegedly makes perfect romantic matches. That the action is all quite silly does not need to be mentioned; like all animated prime-time shows, “Napoleon Dynamite” uses absurd situations and exaggerated characters with funny voices to reveal various moth holes in the cultural fabric — from our definition of masculinity to our dependence on Botox. Here, only Ruell possesses both enough elasticity of voice and talent for annunciation to make his character an ongoing auditory punch line — it’s not what he says, it’s how he says it. The rest rely on the audience fondness for the characters and fairly mild jokes — an antic attempt to pop a zit is as graphic as it gets.
And that is the show’s strength. It appears to be aimed at a tween and early teen audience, making it a rare bird among “grown-up” animated shows. “South Park,” “Family Guy” and even “The Simpsons” have forced parents, already burdened by the dilemmas of social media, to agonize over when their kids are ready to watch these particular cartoons, but “Napoleon Dynamite,” like its feature film predecessor, is surprisingly family friendly. And that’s something anyway.