Nacho Libre: Movie, DVD & Blu-ray disc DVD Review (2006)

8/24/2007 Posted by Admin

"Nacho Libre"

(Originally published June 16, 2006)

The new Jared Hess comedy, "Nacho Libre," puts another monkey on Jack Black's back, but this time it isn't several stories tall, it doesn't have a thing for blondes and it doesn't famously destroy New York real estate.

The monkey in question is the script, which poses the sort of promising premise that tends to make for entertaining television ads, but not necessarily for a movie that lives up to those ads.

With the exception of a few funny sight gags, most of the film's best moments have been revealed in its trailer and advertising campaign--the cheapest trick in the book. As such, the movie, which Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite") based on a script he co-wrote with Jerusha Hess and Mike White, builds expectations but delivers disappointments.

This isn't a bad comedy--it's just a mediocre comedy, which is somehow worse because throughout you can see what it could have been if its jokes had focus that led to bigger laughs.

In the film, Black is Brother Ignacio, a Mexican monk whom we see in flashback as a hefty child who covets lucha libre, the underground wrestling world native to Mexico. Now, as a friar who helps the plight of young orphans, Ignacio leads a secret life of sin, coveting the current luchardors of the day while also pining for the love of the orphanage's new nun, Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera), whom he'd like to lure away from--how to put this delicately--Christ.

Ignacio's deceptions run deeper. In some circles--the lucha libre sort--he comes to be known as Nacho Libre, the hooded wrestler with the sizable paunch and the unfortunate flatulence problem whose wrestling skills are a joke. Joining him in the ring is his toothy sidekick, Esquelto (Hector Jimenez), who shrieks like a pinched soprano whenever he is tossed into the air and helicoptered to the matt, which turns out to be often.

Presumably, the film's pleasures come from watching Black wear a fright wig, bare his bouncing belly, and flex his butt in unflattering lycra. There are some laughs to be had in that, but they evaporate quickly, leaving audiences to hinge their hopes on a storyline that builds to the big match between Nacho and his nemesis--the huge, hulking luchador, Ramses (Cesar Gonzalez).

Along the way, Hess slaps the face of political correctness by unleashing a sideshow of characters that seem to have sprung from the mind of director Tod Browning ("Freaks"). And yet even they are only passably interesting. The trouble with "Nacho Libre" is that it comes up too short too often to make it worth the trouble.

Grade: C