Fridge / Napoleon Dynamite

Fridge Brilliance

• At the beginning of the movie when Napoleon and Kip try Rex Kwan Do, Rex says the class's principles are having someone watching your back, improving your image, and gaining self-respect. Although Napoleon doesn't take the eight-week course, he does use those principles throughout the movie. He befriends Pedro^note and even lampshades it in the process: "So you got my back and everything?", he gets a new suit to wear to the dance after Pedro suggests he do so, and he unexpectedly breaks out of his shell and dances in front of the school to help Pedro win the election. The amount of time the movie takes place over isn't mentioned, but it could very well be eight weeks.
• Random Events Plot? Not really, when you think about it. At first, Napoleon likes to make very big claims about himself, as does Kip to a lesser degree. Some of what Napoleon says about himself is patently false, but then he buys a second-hand dance lesson tape, which he uses to teach himself to dance... and then the opportunity to prove he's got something to brag about after all comes up when he improvises a dance routine in lieu of a skit as part of Pedro's election speech, upon realizing they should have had a skit ready beforehand. And then it turns out Kip really has been chatting with a lady online after all, and they even get married! He even managed to cross the color barrier and find a black girlfriend. And the two plotlines combine when a sweaty Napoleon finds LaFawnduh in his living room and can honestly tell her what he's been up to; she then gives him the mixtape that has the song he uses for the election dance routine on it. So the movie's about a couple losers who can only talk big at first but eventually acquire something to truly brag about. The only difference is Kip makes fewer of these claims about himself and it seems most of them were actually true all along, whereas Napoleon's were probably not true until the dance thing came up.
  • Uncle Rico also likes to brag about things he supposedly did, which is probably where his nephews got that behavior from. He's one of the few people who get anywhere close to being an antagonist in this movie, and aside from his ex-girlfriend apparently tracking him down to give him another shot at being with her, he gets nothing but his own comeuppance for trying to take the easy way and enact get-rich-quick schemes to make his dreams come true, unlike his nephews who actually put in the work to make theirs happen. So the film actually has a few moral messages, namely talk is cheap and you can't take the easy way to get what you want in life.
• Kip and Uncle Rico are obsessed with traveling back in time to 1982. Aside from a few minor things—like Pedro's cousins' hydraulic car, certain songs, and the Internet—this entire movie could easily have happened in 1982.

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