Starring Jon Heder, Tina Majorino, and Jon Gries. Rated general.

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High school isn't easy for anyone. But it's hell for Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Heder), main mover in the movie of the same name and underdog to his own worst demons. Even the bullies who routinely punch him at Preston High, a deadwood school at the ass end of Idaho, do it halfheartedly, as if they are simply fulfilling an unpleasant chore that someone else initiated.

He doesn't help himself, exactly. An ill-dressed beanpole with a shock of red-blond curls, aviator glasses, and the perpetually open mouth of a stunned trout, Napoleon is more likely to call the biggest jock "a freakin' idiot" than to say something nice to a girl. This makes it doubly difficult when it comes to asking someone to the prom. ("Damn! I don't have any skills.") But you start to understand when you (briefly) meet Napoleon's chain-smoking, foul-mouthed grandmother (Sandy Martin) and his meek older brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), a black-socked nobody whose walrus mustache makes him look like a 12-year-old pretending to be grown up.

Napoleon's lame role model is his Uncle Rico, played by cast standout Jon Gries, unrecognizable from his usual bald-loser roles (Jackpot, The Snow Walker). Rico, a grease-ball scam artist still living in his high-school-football glory years, wishes it were still 1982, although there's little on the scene in Preston to tell newcomers it isn't. Anyway, his plan to sell Tupperware door-to-door does get Napoleon out of the house, and Rico is able to meet some lonely housewives.

Napoleon Dynamite is so low-budget, its biggest name is Tina Majorino, most widely seen in Andre, the talking-seal movie. She plays the timid girl who seems to like our nerdy hero, at least a little. Also featured are Efren Ramirez, as the only kid doofus enough to hang out with him, Haylie Duff (Hilary's slightly older sister) as the local bitch queen, and Diedrich Bader, a macho moron who hawks his own brand of "Rex Kwon Do" in TV ads.

The filmmakers, all in their early or mid-20s and mostly veterans, like writer-director Jared Hess, of Brigham Young University's film school, have taken a page from the twisted realism of Wes Anderson and Terry Zwigoff. The people here are not exactly lovable or smart, yet the movie and its characters have a certain bittersweet originality to them. By the time Napoleon improvises his idea of hip-hop dancing for a school assembly, you will find yourself shouting "Sweet!" at his antics. My favourite thing about this offbeat venture, though, is that no one seems to notice the weirdness of our hero's name.