Critic Reviews

The TV series picks up perfectly where the movie left off, adding spice along the way.

It's far funnier than Fox's two still relatively new animated series, Bob's Burgers and Allen Gregory. Mickey Mouse it's not, though.

The animated version of Napoleon Dynamite is almost as funny as a cartoon version as it was in the flesh.

Whether Napoleon will work as a weekly animated series may depend on how well a teenager fits in with the other oddballs who populate Fox's Sunday-night animation bloc.

This Napoleon Dynamite is all go, go, go, racing, if nothing else, to keep pace with the host of other animated prime-time shows it joins.

In spots, it's been turned into an antic Saturday morning cartoon. A shame.

While many from the original cast, including Jon Heder, lend their voices, the film's core of discomforting weirdness has been scrapped for cartoon zaniness.

The mixture isn't dynamite but does have moments of quirky charm, and at least marks a step up in class from "Allen Gregory."

The combination of the characters and the style made the whole shebang much easier for me to take than the movie. Still, I didn't feel any need to watch later episodes.

Napoleon Dynamite the series forms its comedic syntax in the vernacular of those established shows [The Simpsons, Family Guy] instead of retaining the singular phrasing of Napoleon Dynamite the movie, and suffers as a result.