The one joke, of course, is that title character Napoleon (Heder) is anything but dynamite. He is the biggest dork in school, the laughing stock of classmates who body check him into the lockers at any opportunity. In his cheap, no-one-ever-wore-that clothing and out-of-season snow boots, Napoleon is an easy target. The humor comes in watching him be a geek, humor that the film pretends not to be aware of, and it grows quickly tiresome. Worse, Napoleon is not a likeable character, and the film makes no effort to make him so, so when the initial humor wears off, we really don’t care what happens to him.

Filling in Napoleon’s world is his brother Kip, a 35-year-old unemployed nerd who spends every waking moment cruising Internet chat rooms. There is Pedro Sanchez, the new kid in school, and the only Latino, who Napoleon is somehow able to make friends with. Deb is the apple of Napoleon’s eye, the girl he likes but cannot connect with. His efforts lead Deb to inadvertently go to the prom with Pedro, and when Napoleon’s own date (who was forced by her mother to go with him in the first place) ditches him, Napoleon’s prom experience is quickly reduced to cutting in. I wasn’t sure if the filmmakers wanted us to laugh at Napoleon here or feel sorry for him, but it does not matter. By this point we really don’t care what happens to him.

The other person in Napoleon’s life is Uncle Rico (Gries). When Napoleon’s grandmother finds herself laid up after a dune buggy accident, Uncle Rico steps in to look after the two boys. Not much is made of Grandma and the dune buggy; it is an aside to open the door for Uncle Rico, the door-to-door salesman whose head is stuck in the 1982 high school football season and what might have been. Like Napoleon, Uncle Rico is not a likeable character, and he gets boring quickly.