Moviegoers have embraced the PG geekisms of "Napoleon Dynamite"

Anyone who ever walked the hallways of a high school knows that if you want to find your soul mate — or even just avoid being slammed repeatedly into the lockers — you have to have great skills.

You know, skills. Like numchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills, tetherball skills.

The greatest skill right now, though, is the skill of imitating the characters in the hilarious geek-chic comedy "Napoleon Dynamite."

Kids quote lines to each other. Office workers mime the tetherball scene for laughs. Some fans — like Seattle's Kristen Uhring — dressed up like the character Napoleon for Halloween.

The underdog hero with the singular name is a Tater Tot-hoarding, liger-drawing, unicorn-loving, terminally deadpan high-school misfit in rural Preston, Idaho, with a red 'fro and glasses the size of dinner plates.

"Napoleon Dynamite" follows his life and incredibly random times, as he navigates each day at school ("Only the worst day of my freaking life!"); barely tolerates his 32-year-old brother, Kip, and his Uncle Rico; helps his best friend, Pedro, run for school president; practices his dance moves; and falls for Deb, who sells glamour photography and key chains door-to-door.

So if you can say "ID-iot! Gosh!" with just the amount of injured irritation as Napoleon; or lisp a mellow "Peace out" like Kip, or quietly instruct someone to "Imagine you're weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny little seahorses," like Deb, then you, my friend, are LUCK-Y ... Have a tot on us.

Nationwide phenomenon

The movie, made for just $400,000 by Jared Hess, then a film student at Brigham Young University, has become a nationwide phenomenon. Fox Searchlight films bought it at last year's Sundance Film Festival and, along with MTV Films, pumped $10 million into promoting it — with ads and tie-ins in heavy rotation on MTV — for its theatrical release last summer.

It grossed $44.5 million in the United States. But DVD and video are where it has really captured the imagination of the text-messaging, IM-ing, "Simpsons" and "South Park" crowd.

When Fox Searchlight released the $29.98 DVD just before Christmas, the company shipped 2.5 million copies, about twice the usual number for an independent film of that size. The gamble paid off: It sold 1.35 million copies on the first day and was the top-selling DVD for the pre-Christmas week ending Dec. 26. Fox ordered another million copies, and the DVD has remained in the Top 10 list of rentals and sales since it came out.

You know what that means, don't you? It means there's a whole lot of quotin' goin' on in the schools of America.

Twelve-year-old Ben Duchin, who goes to Seattle Country Day School, says most of his friends are fans. He's seen the movie at least four times. His favorite line: "C'mon! I caught you a delicious bass."

AARON RUELL / FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES From left: Jon Gries (Uncle Rico), Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) and Aaron Ruell (Kip) in "Napoleon Dynamite," a comedy about a quirky teenager growing up in the remotes of Idaho.

But not everyone laughs. "It's one of those movies you either really like or you don't," Duchin says. "I like Napoleon's attitude; he's an exaggerated teenager — he's a little surly, he gets upset easily."

In the halls of Shaker Heights High School outside Cleveland, you can hear kids quoting Napoleon's "Heck, yes!" and Kip's "You know I'm training to be a cage fighter."

Julia Shatten, 17, a junior at Shaker, first saw the movie in a theater last summer, but now her little sister owns it. All the better for practicing her own favorite quote, "My lips hurt real bad."

At St. Raphael Elementary School in Bay Village, Ohio, it's Kip's "Napoleon, don't be jealous because I've been chatting online with hot babes all day," and Napoleon's "I like your sleeves."

Fans of all ages

Not all "Napoleon" fans are schoolkids.

Jacob Wagoner, who's 23, lives in Sammamish, tends bar for a living and has seen the movie four times. He and his friends quote it regularly, especially "the things you might've said when you were a little kid": "Idiot! Gosh!" "Sweet!" "Lucky!"

Same goes for Uhring, 25, who said her friends spout lines from the movie, too, and even imitate certain actions. She says she can tell a lot about people by how they respond.

Last Halloween, she donned a red wig, a "Vote for Pedro" T-shirt and a slack-jawed expression. "Half the people at the party I went to knew who I was and started laughing. Other people looked at me like I was a freak," she said.

"It shows someone's taste or sense of humor if they enjoy that movie or not.

"During the holidays, I watched it with my parents and my dad is now quoting it. I was surprised by my mom — she's ultraconservative and she really liked it, because there is no swearing or violence or anything."

As part of her signature on her e-mail, Uhring has one of Kip's lines: "I love technology, now and forever."

Kip himself, aka Aaron Ruell, hears the quotes. In fact, girls come up to Ruell on the street in Los Angeles, where he lives, and launch into an imitation of him.

"Luckily, I don't look like Kip in real life," Ruell said from Park City, Utah, by cellphone — not, alas, in an online chat. "I mean, it's flattering, but when the recognition comes, the fans tend to be voracious."

BYU connection

Ruell, who met "Napoleon's" Hess in film school at BYU, set out to be a writer-director. In fact, he had two highly regarded short films in competition at the Sundance Film Festival last month. He quit his first and only required acting class at Brigham Young in disgust, when the teacher had them all roar like a liger — sorry, we mean lion. (A liger is a cross between a lion and a tiger.)

But since "Napoleon," he's been getting lots of offers for acting gigs in films and TV series. Most of them are Kip-esque, however, and he doesn't like to repeat himself. So for now, he's in pre-production on his first feature film, "Warm Blue Day," a drama he wrote and will direct, with Hess as producer. They hope to start shooting later this year.

Hess has been working on a new script, Ruell said, and directing music videos, including the new "We Will Become Silhouettes" from the Postal Service. (There will be no "Napoleon Dynamite" sequel, despite rampant rumors to the contrary.)

At least one Northwesterner worked on "Napoleon Dynamite": Juanita's Brandon Christensen, who is credited as "1st AC," or first assistant cameraman).

And as for Napoleon himself, Jon Heder, he went to the Brigham Young film school to become an animator, along with his twin brother. (Heder actually did all the drawings in the movie, including the liger.) But after the success of "Napoleon" he got an agent and has been working as an actor, with two films coming up next year, "Just Like Heaven" with Mark Ruffalo and "Monster House" with Steve Buscemi and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

They're all enjoying the success of their film, a success that does not surprise Ruell at all. Made under the Mormon moral code at Brigham Young, it does not have any swearing — unless you count "freaking" — and does not portray sex, alcohol consumption or drug use.

"The biggest-grossing films of all time have always been PG films," Ruell said. "If people craft intelligent, entertaining movies that as a parent you can take your children to, and the whole family will be entertained, I know I'll go see it."

As Napoleon would say: "Sweet."

Now gimme one of your tots.

Lynn Jacobson contributed to this report.