Movie Review Nacho Libre

Nacho Libre (2006) 

Directed by Jared Hess

Written by Jared Hess, Mike White, Jerusha Hess

Starring Jack Black, Peter Stormare, Moises Arias 

Release Date June 16th, 2006 

Published June 15th, 2006 

Jared Hess broke big with his debut feature Napoleon Dynamite. The cult that has grown from Napoleon has raised the stakes on Hess's young career. Expectations for his future success are huge and his follow-up, new to DVD, Nacho Libre is just the kind of oddly humorous, entirely offbeat, flick we might have expected.

Teaming Hess with another rising cult star Jack Black and his pal;writer Mike White is the kind of wonderfully inspired comic combination that Napoleon fans could have dreamed. Nacho Libre is a rare sort of movie made for a cult audience by cult figures. Whether the film can reach beyond the cult is a big question.

In Nacho Libre Jack Black stars as Ignacio, an orphan who grew up in a monastery and became a monk. He's in charge of the food which is just a notch below the kind of gruel described in a Dickens novel. Serving food has never been first and foremost on Ignacio's mind. Even as a child he was drawn to the dramatic spectacle of the Mexican wrestling ring and the masked heroes known as Luchadores.

One night the orphanage's food is stolen; Ignacio decides the only way to get the money to feed the children is to wear stretchy pants and become a luchadore. To do this he seeks out the very thief who stole the food, a skinny naif named Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez). With his speed and surprising strength, Esqueleto is the perfect partner for the newly dubbed Nacho.

Of course becoming a luchador is not easy. In fact Nacho and Esqueleto make a regular habit of getting their butts kicked by every possible combination of luchadore, fat, skinny even lilliputian luchadores. On the bright side they are paid even when they lose. The question becomes will the fame of the wrestling world go to Nacho's head or can he remain a humble monk and win the heart of a beautiful nun, Sister Encarnacion (Ana DeLa Reguera). Or can he possibly do both.

The plot description sounds far more straightforward than it actually is. In fact most of the comedy does not come from the oddball wrestling scenes but rather from Jack Black's unique persona. To get the humor of Nacho Libre you must be a fan of Jack Black and familiar with the kind of madcap insanity that entertains him.

Indeed it seems that much of the premise of Nacho Libre and the idea of Jack Black playing an outsized mexican wrestling champion extends from an idea that maybe only Jack Black and writer Mike White thought was funny. Then came director Jared Hess who took the unusual premise and filtered it through his deadpan comic perspective and the idea became even less accessible.

Esoteric doesn't begin to describe the humor of Nacho Libre. Sure there are plenty of the pratfalls and physical humor that Jack Black specializes in, but much of the film is an earnest examination of a man and a dream to become a luchadore. The humor then comes from Jack Black playing a character whose dream is to become a luchadore and if you don't think that is funny then Nacho Libre is not the movie for you.

To enjoy Nacho Libre you have to enjoy Jack Black and his manic energy, odd gesticulation and in this film, a funny accent. The story of Nacho Libre is earnest and oddly straightforward, the humor comes from Jack Black being a Mexican wrestler. I found it funny, but I can understand where some people might not.

For me, as a fan of Jack Black's strange sense of humor, his odd tics and verbal dynamics, Nacho Libre is a terrifically funny film. If however you are uninitiated to the cult of Jack black then Nacho Libre may be a trying experience, a series of earnest, deadpan examinations of the very odd life of an odd man who wears stretchy pants and dreams of leaping off the top rope. You have to smile at that last description to be part of the audience of Nacho Libre.