The amazing thing about watching Napoleon Dynamite, a movie which purports to be a comedy, is that it didn’t get a single good laugh out of me the whole time. A chuckle here and there, yes. Maybe an amused smile, once in a while. But honestly I didn’t really laugh once during the entire 82 minutes. And this, I think, is the entire brilliance that is Napoleon Dynamite. Despite his uber-geekiness, despite the complete lack of social graces, despite being crippled with an equally geeky family of apparent losers, despite being the butt of every high school indignity, I never once felt like it was OK to laugh at what was happening to Napoleon Dynamite. I never once felt like it was OK to laugh at _him_. As Napoleon admits during the movie’s big turning point, he always trusts and follows his heart. And that’s ultimately why he’s such a sympathetic character and that’s what insulates him from ridicule.