A catchy name for a movie, but not a name that fits its owner: the nerd of nerds at Preston High in podunk Idaho, a misfit for much more than just his name. Sporting a tumbleweed of kinky blond hair atop his gangly slope-shouldered frame, breathing through a troutlike open mouth, speaking in a monotone by turns belligerent and resentful, peering out at the world through half-closed eyes and an oversized pair of aviator glasses, he is almost an Expressionistic caricature of adolescent discomfort. And the unknown actor, Jon Heder, gives not so much a performance as a mere presentation: here I am, like it or lump it. His unfamiliarity (is he really like that?) harmonizes beautifully with his many discomforts: his clumsiness with the opposite sex ("I see you're drinking one-percent. Is that 'cause you think you're fat?"), his mortification over his closest relatives (an older brother involved in an Internet courtship, an uncle pathologically nostalgic for his footballing heyday in the Eighties: "It's a time machine, Napoleon. We bought it on-line"), his bond of alienation with the only Latino in his class, his favorite pastime of solo tetherball. The clever credits sequence, composed of unappetizing plates of food and assorted other mundanities (a Chapstick, a library check-out card, and so on), correctly forecasts the relentless quirkiness of the film, a feel-odd comedy that takes a hard turn at the end toward a feel-good comedy (not without adequate preparation: a closed-door practice session in which the hero "gets his groove on" with a dance-instruction video found at a thrift shop). The equally unknown director, Jared Hess, whom we might like to imagine got to know his star by way of alphabetical seating in Study Hall, would appear to have undergone some sort of artistic epiphany while watching a Wes Anderson film: flat, squared-up images, dealt out in a kind of hammer-and-anvil rhythm. The consistency of it all, not just the rhythm but the tone, is ultimately persuasive. The viewer is given plenty of time to attune, to adjust, to acclimate. He is given no special inducement. Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirez, Tina Majorino. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd