An inside look at Napoleon’s reign

Napoleon Dynamite: Like, the Best Special Edition Ever!

(Fox, two discs, $26.98)

ANYONE who might still be mulling summer vacation plans should be tickled to learn that it is not too late to book tickets for the second annual Napoleon Dynamite Festival on July 7 and 8 in Preston, Idaho.

If the lure of beautiful downtown Preston (population 4,791, in the 2000 census) doesn’t send you lunging for your AmEx, your heart will leap at the whirligig of activities inspired by the movie for which the festival was named. Choose from the Tater Tot Eating Contest, the Tether Ball Tournament, a performance by the Preston High School Happy Hands Club, the Moon Boot Dance Contest, the Napoleon Impersonation Contest, a school-bus village tour (arrive early to position yourself in the back seat where Napoleon tossed his action figure out the window) and an autograph op with Lyle, the farmer who shot the cow.

For those who read this endorsement as the snide condescension of a city-dwelling film critic, rest assured that I would be there in a heartbeat if I hadn’t already squandered my frequent-flier mileage on a round-trip to Italy. Lake Maggiore may have its charms, but it can’t offer a Preston Chamber of Commerce T-shirt that reads, “Tina, You Fat Lard, Come Get Your Dinner.” O Tina, cara mia!

Those who have had the “Napoleon Dynamite” experience will readily recognize Tina as the black llama owned by Napoleon’s dirt-biking grandma. What they might not know is that Tina is actually Dolly Llama in real life and belongs to the mother of Jared Hess, the Preston-born, Brigham Young University-trained wunderkind, who, at 24, directed and co-wrote (with his wife, Jerusha) a teen comedy that has the unmistakable feel of a classic.

I found this and many other essential tidbits of “Napoleon” on the two-disc special-edition DVD just released, which contains enough insider lore to reduce you to the glazed-eyelid pall of Jon Heder, its improbable star.

Filmed in Preston in summer 2003 on a $400,000 budget (Heder was paid $1,000 for his performance), “Napoleon Dynamite” overcame a double whammy of damning Variety columns upon its Sundance festival premiere, when Fox Searchlight won it in a heated bidding war and groomed it for box-office glory in summer 2004.

I was at that triumphant Sundance world premiere, and I shall never forget the tumultuous roar that erupted from the Park City Library audience midway into the picture as Napoleon, sporting his newly acquired brown, three-piece thrift-shop suit, strutted down the road in “I’m so boss” slow motion.

The Sundance delirium announced the ascension of movieland’s reigning high school nonentity. As embodied by the director’s fellow BYU-er Heder, Napoleon is a frizz-headed giraffe of teenage zombie-ness, clomping around in aviator glasses and blue moon boots or furtively sketching centaurs and unicorns during class. He is the token guy in the all-girl sign-language club, standing on the end and flapping his fingers to a synchronized-hand version of “The Rose.”

Sputtering with negative superlatives and hissing punctured-tire style with undirected frustration, Napoleon is so fervent in his gaucheness that he tips over into a whole other realm of cool. Teenagers have a bad rap for cliquishness and group-think intolerance, but they actually have great respect for those courageous enough (or, as in Napoleon’s case, oblivious enough) to own their warts and idiosyncrasies. It is the totality with which Napoleon wears his otherness to which young audiences have responded.

If you reduce it to its skeletal components, “Napoleon Dynamite” is a routine, revenge-of-the-nerds teen comedy. You’ve got your bullies, your wimps, your preening star jocks and stuck-up Heathers. There is a nasty student-government election, evil cafeteria chow and a drippy dress-up dance.

It is the deadpan specificity with which Hess rejiggers these archetypes and the Eggleston-like spareness of Munn Powell’s cinematography that lifts them out of the generic and into a place that feels newly discovered. Add to this an ensemble of several untested young actors in key roles that they seem born to play, and you have the kind of movie that people feel compelled to revisit like a favorite childhood swimming hole.

What other teen comedy would dare to pair a lumbering personality such as Napoleon with such a commensurately low-burning slug as Pedro, Napoleon’s melancholic but politically ambitious Mexican American chum (sweetly underplayed by Efren Ramirez). There’s also Kip (Aaron Ruell), Napoleon’s epically white-bread, computer-nerd brother, who composes sweet-nothing e-mails all day to LaFawnduh (the winning Shondrella Avery), his chat-room sweetheart in Detroit.

The diminutive Ruell may be the film’s greatest unsung asset, as much for the character-inspired junk-food parade he whips up for the film’s delightful opening credit sequence as for the original performance that follows. Hiding behind matching Napoleon glasses, a Valentino mustache and braces that have the cumulative impact of a novelty-store goon mask, Ruell (another BYU veteran) pulls off a feat of immersion as impressive in its comic authority as that of the film’s star.

Ruell offers a funny anecdote in the second of two DVD commentaries (both worth checking out) about the family origins of the movie’s hilarious time-machine episode, one of the many eccentric flourishes that lend the film its singularly dorky je ne sais quoi. The commentaries and the extensive making-of footage reveal the extent to which personal family chronicle (mostly those of the director and his wife) contribute to “Napoleon Dynamite’s” authentic feel for regional absurdities.

Indeed, one could say that Jared Hess has done as much to consecrate Preston, Idaho, as a breeding ground of the banal as John Waters did for Baltimore. While Hess mentions the Coen brothers at the top of his list of influences, “Napoleon Dynamite” brandishes a double-edged sword of affection and attitude toward its home territory reminiscent of the kind wielded by Waters in everything from “Hairspray” to “Pink Flamingos.”

One might pray that Hess is able to maintain both his rectitude and his waggish comic instincts as he wades into the waters of studio financing.

Hess and his wife have teamed again for the comedy “Nacho Libre,” a summer release starring Jack Black. It could be a match made in heaven. I’m inclined to feel sanguine about a director, who, when asked to expound on his philosophy of filmmaking, picks a booger from his nose and flicks it out a car window.