I live in Salt Lake City, one of the highest concentrations of Mormons in the world. You know those people, that are some sort of religion, you've heard about them on the news?
Yeah, well they absolutely eat this movie up. It was made by a guy from Brigham Young University (where the Mormons send their young when they turn 20 and get back from being religion salesmen all over the world) and I literally cannot go 10 minutes without hearing a line from that damn movie.
I'm a senior in high school, and its a tossup between ND and Chapelle's show for which is overused the most by all the amateur "comedians." We had student body elections last month, and I swear that half of the candidates in each grade used Napoleon Dynamite in their campaigns. That's not hyperbole-I saw three "Vote for ....." posters for three different people. There was a talent show, and not one, but two people did a version of the Napoleon dance, and one guy came out as the karate instructor guy.
The reason they love it is because most of the people in that movie, especially Napoleon, are a reflection of all of them. "Dang," "Idiot!", "Your mom goes to college," etc.? The people here have ALWAYS talked like that. I've met at least four real life Uncle Rico's. The liger? The first one appeared at the main zoo in SLC years ago (it's still there, but stuffed.) The Kanab cowboys? That's an actual school in the south.
Now, in the movie, Napoleon is a nerdy outcast. But, since a good 65% of people here are Mormons, the Napoleon types are the COOL KIDS.
It's not all bad though. The utter lack of testosterone that is characteristic of most guys here makes me look like James Dean without even trying.
As for the movie itself, I really have no idea how it become popular out of my little ****hole. It's one of the worst made movies I've ever seen, and I only laughed when they killed the cow in front of the school bus full of kids. Everyone tells me I need to "see it more than once" or "be in the right mood" to understand it. I've seen it four times, twice sober, once high, once drunk off my ass. It just keeps getting worse, when usually intoxicants make things a lot funnier.
Sorry about the essay-I really needed to relate that to the outside world.