NACHO LIBRE

“Chancho, when you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room... It's for fun.”

Jack Black has always been funny. You can put him in almost any situation, and he’ll be funny; as a singer, as a stoner in ORANGE COUNTY, as a substitute teacher in SCHOOL OF ROCK, even in KING KONG. He is naturally funny, charismatic, and easy to like. NACHO LIBRE, however, is none of the above.

Black plays a monk named Ignacio in a poor Catholic Mexican orphanage, where the children often have little to eat. He is an oaf, often scorned by his fellow friars, but is loved by the children. Now, insert Ana de la Reguera, playing Sister Encarnacion, new to the orphanage. She really is an expendable part, a female part intended to bring in a romantic angle and maybe create some more laughs, but no, nothing happens. It’s as if writer/director Jared Hess forgot that this was a PG-rated, Nickelodeon-back movie that doesn’t need a romantic story. Then it is as if Hess remembers this, along with the thought that Nacho and Encarnacion, well can’t do anything with each other (nothing more than talk about the Bible).

In an attempt to raise money for the orphanage Ignacio becomes a luchador, a revered type of Mexican wrestler. This goes against his standards as a man of God, however, because wrestling is apparently a series of praising false idols. Again, does this socio-commentary really matter in a movie like this? Anyways, he becomes a luchador under the pen name of Nacho Libre (“Free Ignacio”), and finds literally the first person he can see on the street to be his partner, a man who jumped him and stole the food he was bringing back to the orphanage. If you can’t tell that this is a stupid at this point in the review, I’ll spoil it: it is.

Hess uses the same kind of dead-pan, minimalistic style of filming he used in his first film, NAPOLEAN DYNAMITE. The script is intentionally stupid, but not always funny. Again I must point out that Jack Black is a funny guy, and if he had a decent script to work with in this movie, it would in all likelihood be hilarious. The truth of it is though, it’s not a funny movie. I laughed a few times, mostly because I’m sixteen and still enjoy stupid stuff. After about halfway through the movie though, the jokes became less funny, and more awkward.

Overall, NACHO has it’s funny moments, but it can’t string them together to make a funny movie.

C