I remember shortly after Napoleon Dynamite came out, I made a remark about how much I enjoyed the performance given my Jon Heder and how much I was looking forward to seeing him in other types of roles. Well… i guess the lesson here is to be careful of what you wish for.
Not long afterwards Heder got himself a supporting role in the Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy “Just Like Heaven“. Even though his role was small, the marketing of the film made sure to highlight that it also features “Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder”. Heder… was terrible.
I wrote it off. “Who cares?” I said. After all it was just a small role and didn’t really mean anything. Maybe he just needed a different director. Maybe he just needed a little time to adjust to a non-Napoleon Dynamite existence. But still… his performance was worrisome.
Then we saw that he was getting a legitimate lead role along side comedy veterans David Spade and Rob Schneider (the man who took out a newspaper spread to announce he would never work with Mel Gibson… as if Mel Gibson would ever agree with work with that talentless hack in his most colorful fairy-tale fantasy) in The Benchwarmers. One of the very worst films I’ve seen in the last 2 years… and once again… Jon Heder was terrible. I was really disappointed.
In the two post-Napoleon films, it always struck me that Heder just didn’t know how to NOT be Napoleon Dynamite… and his act got really tired. Now there is a trailer for his new film School for Scoundrels… and once agin Heder just looks out of place… and out of his league. It looks horrible… and so does he.
About a year and a half ago, when they first announced that Heder would be doing a comedy with Will Ferrell about two figure skaters called “Blades of Glory”, it sounded like a magnificent idea! Perfect! Hilarious! Well that was before we saw Heder in Heaven and Benchwarmers. Now I bet the studio is wishing they never did it.
Who knows. Perhaps Heder will explode out of his Napoleon shell. Maybe he’ll show us that he has a reservoir of talent inside that he just hasn’t let out yet, and that he’s more than just a one trick pony. But I’ve got to tell ya… if that reservoir is in there somewhere… I haven’t seen it yet.
So what do you guys think? Is Heder just a one trick pony? A one hit wonder? Or do you see something in his post-Dynamite performances that I’m missing? If so… what is it?
Before deciding… make sure you take a look at the trailer for School for Scoundrels here and judge for yourself.
