Napoleon: Complex, it’s not

There are some funny lines and ideas in “Napoleon Dynamite,” the first feature from 24-year-old director Jared Hess, which he shot and set in his hometown of Preston, Idaho.

But the movie might have been more tolerable in small doses. As the surly hero of a feature-length movie, albeit a short one, Napoleon’s two-dimensionality becomes painfully evident, as does the lack of plot.

Bushy-haired, bespectacled Napoleon goes to Preston High School each day wearing some kind of hideous, cheapo T-shirt adorned with horses or unicorns. His scrawny, mustachioed older brother, Kip Dynamite (Aaron Ruell), stays home and chats for hours with his cyber girlfriend, LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery).

Their Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), a former quarterback who constantly relives his high school glory days, moves in with them and brings his get-rich-quick schemes, which involve time machines and Tupperware.

Then Napoleon’s new friend, Pedro (Efren Ramirez), a Mexican immigrant, decides to challenge the popular Summer (Haylie Duff, Hilary’s sister) in the student body election. Helping with the campaign is another misfit, Deb (Tina Majorino, who provides one of the film’s few sources of warmth and kindness).

Each character is his or her own self-contained, one-note joke. You can rely on them to be funny much of the time, but don’t expect them to evolve.

There is a certain makeshift charm to the movie that will probably earn it a cult following. So will its fashionable time warp – the clothes, hairstyles and furnishings suggest 1982, but the existence of the Internet indicates otherwise.