Lathered with daft characters, odd obsessions and plot-free deadpan humor, “Napoleon Dynamite” is the sort of flaky heartland confection that would have made a really first-rate cartoon panel in some edgy independent weekly newspaper. Among his other influences — “Rushmore” filmmaker Wes Anderson immediately comes to mind — 25-year- old writer-director Jared Hess nails the buzzed, Bizarro-world tenor of outre cartoonist Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World”).

It makes for a derivative — though not unamusing — cinematic daytrip. Newcomer Jon Heder gives the year's most brash comic performance as the titular geek-hero, Napoleon Dynamite, a picked-upon Idaho teen whose many, mostly imaginary interests include staff-fighting, portrait-sketching and wolverine-hunting. Tragically coiffed, harmlessly short-tempered, his mouth fixed in a dull, impudent gape, Napoleon is like the unholy genetic hybrid of comedian Steven Wright and Molly Shannon's Mary Katherine Gallagher character on “Saturday Night Live.” "Give me some tots, Napoleon," a jock insists, seeing that Napoleon has snuck some tater treats into the classroom.

"No! Get your own. I'm, like, starving!" Napoleon shoots back, right before the bully smashes the tots all over his thigh.

And so on. Other episodes involve Napoleon's Web-surfing, live-at-home adult brother (a riotously lispy Aaron Ruell), his past-pining, Tupperware- selling uncle (Jon Gries of "Real Genius"), and his kinship with Pedro (Efren Ramirez, also great), a Mexican classmate who Napoleon admires for his "sweet moustache." Ultimately, Napoleon and Pedro band together to defy the high school's radiant social elite, suggesting that Hess — a veteran Mormon crewmember of such Latter- Day Saintsploitation comedies as "The R.M." — admires "Revenge of the Nerds" as much as he does the arthouse.

Lavishly praised at last winter's Sundance Film Festival, "Napoleon Dynamite" is thematically hollow — its ironic vision of whitebred banality is designed solely for our bemusement and nothing else. Still, that might be enough to lift Napoleon to cult status among teen viewers; it's easy to imagine his exasperated one-liners perched on the tips of their tongues for years to come.