That was my take too. The joke wasn’t that LaFawnduh was black or that she was taller than Kip or that she was physically different, the humor was based on the fact that she existed at all, that she was who Kip thought she was and that she really did like him. It seemed like he was going to get set up for a pie in the face but the pie never came. The funny is that an introverted nerd gushes on about his online girlfriend and then she turns out to be exactly what he built her up to be. I actually found that payoff to be kind of touching and a nice relief from what I expected to culminate in an ordinary, cliched gag where she turns out to be a man or 500 lbs or something.
Speaking as a native of Napoleon Dynamite land, I viewed the racial content as a commentary on how people of color are often regarded in Idaho. The area of Idaho that ND is set in (Preston) has experienced an in-flux of Latino immigration in the last ten years and it has challenged many white residents’ ideas about race and ethnicity. The mis-informed comments characters make about “chimminychangas” and pinatas I saw as making some serious observations about the white/Latino tensions in the area.
That’s just my two potatoes . . .
I found it funny in the set up. Kip was looking for girls on the internet, and bragging about how he somtimes spent hours talking to the same girl. We, being internet savvy, just knew he was mistaken. Either he was really talking to a man, or a hopelessly awful women. So we know he is going to be dissapointed. The discription he has of the woman he is going to meet is nothing like LaFawnduh, so even when they first meet, we being clever, know it can’t possibly work out. We quickly see what a great big hearted person LaFawnduh is :smack: not what we expected. Now we expect she won’t want anyhting to do with the loser Kip. This view is what we get from Kip’s relatives (who all seem to be affluent and intelligent in the Wedding scene, obvious African-American steriotypes 
), but :smack: again we see Kip and LaFawnduh are very much in love with each other and LaFawnduh is strong enough in that love to defy her brother who thinks Kip is not nearly good enough for her.
So the humour for me at least was in the turning arround twice of our expectations of what would happen to Kip and his internet met girlfriend.
It would have been funny, but it would not have fit with the movie’s overall tone. A lot of people don’t seem to get this, but Napolean Dynamite is at heart a compassionate film, and the writers obviously have a lot of affection for the main characters, despite their status as social outcasts.
Jared Hess has mentioned that the characters of Napolean and Kip are autobiographical and largely based upon himself and his brothers. He also grew up in Preston, Idaho, the same town where the movie was filmed.
It’s a movie of, by, and for the geeks of the world, plain and simple, and Kip’s union with Lafawnduh is every geek’s dream come true. 
(bolding mine)
Right. This is exactly what we are led to believe is going to happen. But the thing is, based on the joke’s presentation it’s not immediately clear that this didn’t happen. It came off as too ambiguous.
At the bus stop scene when LaFawnduh was first revealed, there was all this suspension added to goad the audience into wondering just how atrocious this woman was going to be. Then we see LaFawnduh–a tall, garishly dressed black woman in a blonde wig/weave grinning from ear to ear. Now to me, this woman was not a babe or a hottie. The typical babe/hottie character tends to be a lot more on the understated side, not so drag queeny. But she was hardly a monster, either. So that’s what made me wonder what the punchline actually was. It shouldn’t surprise us that she’s black, since we are informed of her name early on. But we can’t make that assumption about Kip–him being from Idaho and all. So I was left wondering if her race was being used as the expectation-shattering surprise.
IIRC, it’s not until well after the intial scene at the bus stop that we see that the couple are happy with each other. The scene at the bus stop cuts away to something else before we see how Kip reacts to his love interest. So for a minute I was left wondering “What’s so atrocious about LaFawnduh? She’s not all that bad.”
I think if the hook was that Kip was right and our cynical expectations were wrong, then they should have made LaFawnda fit the babe/hottie stereotype a little better. Her personality could have shown through just as well had they emphasized her beauty more and de-emphasize all the garishness of her costume and cosmetics.
But maybe that’s me. It could be that I was thrown by that hair of hers. It looked like a hot mess to me! Totally disqualified her from being a babe in my eyes.
Oh I get that. I actually enjoyed the movie. Just found this particular storyline lacking.
Huh. I actually think LaFawnduh’s entire outfit/wardrobe (along with a lot of the other costuming) was really very good and realistic. There are people out there that dress(ed) like that. It was the complete antithesis of most other Hollywood costuming–it wasn’t clean and polished and entirely out of the character’s economic reach. It was entirely appropriate, I thought, for people in the lower and lower-middle classes in a rural area for an amorphous early-'90s way.
I think that would have just been playing into a different cliche: nerdy guy gets the hot chick that would normally be totally out of his league. LaFawnda isn’t supposed to be a “babe,” she’s supposed to be the black, urban equivalent of the rest of the characters in the movie. Lower middle class, tacky, kinda wierd, but basically a good, nice person.
Nitpick: Slant’s review, not Slate’s. Slate’s is largely positive and doesn’t include the charge of racism.
Oops. Thanks for the correction.
I recall no racism in Napoleon Dynamite; just some prejuidce and minor bigotry. Just because a movie has some bigoted characters doesn’t necessarily mean the whole movie can be characterized like that.
Just to clear up any confusion, Lafawnduh was hot. Tackily dressed, yet. But ugly, no.
Kip lucked out (and then some). I think the funnier payoff was the fact that Kip started adopting the accoutrements and affectations of (one would imagine) her ideal soul mate, which is exactly what a character like Kip would do. He’s definitely the submissive one in the relationship.
I think the punchline was that there was no punchline. The first thought that entered my mind was that his internet girlfriend was hideously ugly or a dude or nonexistant. I was surprised and quite pleased that LaFawnda turned out to be real.
Coming from a hispanic individual’s perspective, I did not find ND racist or insensitive at all. Pedro is one of the film’s major heroes. Yes, he is a bit of a dullard but he is very likeable and is a good friend. He does nothing but nice things for people and he eventually gets elected president over the “evil” Summer (who makes the racist remark). His gangster cousins are mean looking, but they too show that they are good guys by giving Napoleon and his date a ride to the dance (as others have mentioned) and they show up at the last second like the calvary to protect the weak guy from the mean aggressive bully (and they get him to stop with a simple head shake rather than getting out and kicking his @ss).
As far as the Lafawnduh scene, I interpreted that the funny thing was supposed to be the differences between the two characters, emphasized by the fact that they met on the internet, as opposed to face to face in real life. If it were not for the weird world of the internet, these two would not have ended up together. Kip is small town, pale, short, weak, socially awkward, asexual (or at least seems sexually inexperienced), and lacking in self confidence. In contrast, Lafawnduh is big city, dark, tall, strong, extroverted, confident, and appears that she would break Kip in half the first time they had sex. They are in love and she tutors him to be more like her, and Kip becomes the better man because of it. Doesn’t seem racist to me (although it would have been better if her name did not end in “duh”).
There was similar reversal of expecations with Napolean’s dance at the end. We just naturally expect that his bravado about “practicing dance moves” in his room is just more of his deluded BS in line with when he talks about stuff like shooting wolverines with a 12 gauge. We think he’s going to embarrass himself in front of the school and so it comes as a surprise when he actually turns out to be able to dance.
The thing about his dance, though, is that it’s still very much Napolean. He doesn’t turn in an unrealistically polished or technical performance, it’s a weird mish-mash of styles and dorky grace that manages to be spectacular in it’s total effect. It’s not “ha ha the dork can dance,” it’s a perfect expression of dorkiness.
I think in a lot of ways, that dance is what the movie’s all about. It’s about finding heart and beauty not under oddball, goofy exteriors but in them.
I laughed so hard I cried. Crimminy, it’s a deadpan humor jeuvenile film that hit a lot of funnybone moments and a few dud moments. Feh. Racist. Please.
Okay, I am going to take a risk here, because I trust all of you very very much.
Am I the only doper who thought that her name was hilarious because it was ( in my mind’s eye ) spelled " LaFonda " and was a play on Jane Fonda ??
Just…yanno…anyone else who thought this, feel free to chime in.
–chirp chirp–
Oh.
Cartooniverse 
p.s. I adored the utter lack of camera movement. It forced you to concentrate on what the characters were doing, or in many scenes…enduring. 
I have no idea why you had any indication it was a play on “Jane Fonda”.
I recently caught a bit of Footloose on the tube, and during the big scene where Bacon is teaching Chris Penn rhythm, there are a lot of moves that Napoleon uses. The two hand thrust with the kick-out, and the low-snap. If you ever see Footloose again, I think you’ll notice similarities.
What’s worse. . .I was also rcently watching Bonnie And Clyde and I was struck by how much Warren Beatty looked like Uncle Rico.
It’s a little more obvious when it’s not static, but you might get it a little from these images. The thick eyebrows and full lower lip establish it but Uncle Rico gets a squinty far away look in his eyes that seems totally copped from some of Beatty’s mannerisms as Clyde.
http://www.amsiriano.com/images/uncle_rico.jpg
http://static.siberalem.com/gruplar/Unutulmaz%20Film%20Replikleri/clyde4.jpg