Nacho Libre
By: Mark Runyon | Category: On DVD | 06/23/06 | 04:15 PM
 |  |  Grade: C | Genre: Comedy
Summary: Nacho Libre isn't a total loss. There are a host of funny scenes, making it entirely watchable, but you come out feeling you got gypped.
Jared Hess has to be one of the most unlikely of heroes in Hollywood. His indie flick Napoleon Dynamite has become a baffling cult hit, embedding itself in the lexicon of our generation. Can you go anywhere these days without being hit up with the campaign message 'Vote for Pedro' blazoned across someone's t-shirt? Napoleon made it cool for everyone to embrace their inner dork whether its shaking your groove thing in front of the high school auditorium or putting your nuts into an electric vise labeled 'time machine.' We've all been through the hell known as high school and can finally smile about the daily misery Napoleon suffers on a continual loop because there is a little Napoleon in all of us. Now creator Jared turns his gaze from time warped Idaho to a Mexican monk turned wrestler, spearheaded by eccentric comic Jack Black. The fusion of humor between Hess and Black was just too tempting to pass up. It's a shame that something got lost in the translation. |
Nacho Libre tell the story of Ignacio (Jack Black), a bumbling monk who spends his days cooking stomach turning gruel for pitiful orphans in tumbleweed Mexico. The monastery affords him no funds to adequately feed the boys so he's reduced to cobbling together whatever questionably edible things he can find to conjure up dinner. His true love is in the masked art of lucha libre (freestyle wrestling), a desire he painfully represses because its not fitting of a man of the cloth to be running around in stretchy pants. It doesn't stop him from doodling about his fantasy costume during mass and dreaming of being showered with unadulterated fame.
 | | | Nacho Libre | | Starring: Jack Black, Ana de la Reguera, Hector Jimenez, Darius Rose & Moises Arias | | Director: Jared Hess |
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Ignacio's dream gets a kick-start one afternoon while out picking up the donated orphan chips. He is jumped by a spindly street hooligan who whips his ass to steal the stale chips. He's determined to befriend this gutter rat so that together they can use their scrappy street skillz to pin and pile drive their way to becoming tag team professionals. Unlike the professional actors of WWF, the guys they are pitted against are warriors. Strange rather curious warriors, but warriors nonetheless. The duo enter match after match and get their ass handed to them time and again. So why would these clearly inept fighters keep entering the ring you ask? As the loser, they keep getting paid a meager sum for their efforts. Participation ribbon if you will. This newfound wealth allows the tag team partners to get fitted in new duds, and Ignacio rolls his winnings into bountiful feasts for the wide-eyed youngsters.
Ignacio, and his alter ego Nacho, are hopelessly enamored with a visiting nun named Sister Encarnacion (the vivacious Ana de la Reguera). He invites her to his wrestling matches, but gets the inevitable smack down by the bible thumper. He keeps lavishing her with attention, weaseling ways to have toast with her, and finding new ways to express his budding forbidden love.
So it all sounds like wacky fun right? Well not so fast bucko. The humor is very disjointed and tries too hard to pass off these laughs. Black does his usual prancing around, making manic faces and belting out Tenacious D-type melodies. The problem is the jokes never seem to connect or are two steps behind where they should be. For this disconnect, I'm blaming the synergy (or lack thereof) of Black with Jared Hess' delivery. Hess sets the film up with a similar Napoleon Dynamite-type quirky irrelevance, but doesn't hook that into Jack Black's unique style. Napoleon worked because of Jon Heder's perfect slow mo delivery meshed perfectly with Hess' pacing and bizarro world. Black and Hess are essentially making two separate films.
Nacho Libre isn't a total loss. There are a host of funny scenes, making it entirely watchable, but you come out feeling you got gypped. Don't believe me. Fork over your $9 to checkout Nacho Libre then queue up Napoleon for 15 minutes. It is like the sunlight cracking open the dawn as all the seams of potential, where Nacho failed, will magically appear. Chalk this one up to growing pains. Jack Black will go on to make insanely funny films, and Jared Hess will find his groove once again with the appropriate actor to interpret his muse. It just won't be with one another.
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