Nacho Libre

Nacho Libre is a goofy-little slip-on-a-banana-peel sort of a movie that I found endearing, a kind of Fatty Arbuckle movie for the 2000s.

Nacho Libre is about an acolyte-cook, played by Jack Black, at a church-sponsored orphanage who begins to wrestle in the amateur Mexican lucha libre circuit so as to provide the orphans with better meals.

Nacho induces a homeless man (Hector Jimenez) to join him as his tag-team wrestling partner and dons a mask to protect his priestly identity. Jimenez is as thin as the gruel that Nacho has been serving at the orphanage, so it’s no surprise that their team doesn’t win any matches. Still, after every fight the lovable losers get a piece of the box office and the orphans eat better. With their success, if you can call it that, a larger fight looms.

Naturally there’s a number of fight sequences in the movie and plenty of comic violence. But it’s all slapstick. I can imagine Nacho Libre as a silent movie except for the fact that the music… with the score by Danny Elfman… is absolutely dynamite.

There’s also a ‘love’ story subplot with Nacho and a nun-teacher at the orphanage, played by the lovely Ana de la Reguera. Nacho writes her a funny love letter inviting her to renounce her vows and join him in marriage. Just before the big fight, he also sings a Jack Black-style rock ballad in de la Reguera’s honor. But since the two never do renounce their vows or consummate any kind of physical relationship, it’s not exactly your standard movie romance. Heck, even in a silent movie the hero would have gotten a chaste little kiss. But not here.

Nacho Libre is Jared Hess’s sophomore effort, and we learn something about both him and Jack Black.

For Jack Black, the rule of thumb is becoming; go see any movie in which he sings. Kinda like the rule of thumb that any movie in which John Travolta dances is worth seeing, Staying Alive being a notable exception.

For his part, Hess shows that his filmmaking style has little to do with his budget.

Those shots of the austere Southeastern Idaho landscape in Napoleon Dynamite… and his willingness to fill the screen with ordinary-looking people who make their homes there… wasn’t just planks-on-cinderblock college-budget chic. Nacho Libre was filmed entirely in the Mexican State of Oaxaca with a much larger budget. But as with Napoleon Dynamite, Hess makes both the striking Oaxacan landscape and the people who inhabit it characters in his movie.

Nacho Libre is “rated PG for some rough action, and crude humor including dialogue.”

I grade the movie as a B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Nacho Libre received that bonus in my review. Without it, I would have rated it as a B-.

The Da Vinci Code

A lot of ink has been spilled over Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code and Ron Howard’s movie version of the same. Since 'brevity is the soul of wit' here’s my review in a mere five words:

Tularemia Roll Fry Of Voodoo.

That’s not a Creole dish made with a summer rabbit, it's an anagram, which are to great effect in the movie. See if you can figure it out before you come to the end of the review.

The Da Vinci Code is a big movie, shot in France and the UK, and filled with stars from two continents.

It’s also a sprawling movie. In the movie exhibition business they have an expression called ‘popcorn movies’ that refers to movies like, say, National Treasure wherein patrons buy a lot of concessions to go with the movie. I don’t know if The Da Vinci Code is a popcorn movie or not, but be smart and don’t try to make it a ‘large Coke movie’ unless you have a particularly patient bladder.

That said, the filmmakers didn’t have much of a choice. The book is plot thick. So hats off to both Howard and the screenwriter for finding middle ground.

The plot of The Da Vinci Code is well known. An American symbologist (don’t ask) played by Tom Hanks, is implicated in the death of a French professor in the Louvre. But with the help of a cute French police officer (Audrey Tautou), he cleverly avoids arrest for a crime he didn’t commit.

While in the Louvre, Hanks and Tautou are drawn into a kind of treasure hunt for the Holy Grail. Hot on their tracks are a police detective played with Inspecter Javier-like determination by French actor Jean Reno, and a fanatic albino monk named Silas (Paul Bettany). All three parties converge at the countryside villa of Sir Leigh Teabing, a lifelong Grail-hound played by Ian McKellen, who apparently gets to be in every blockbuster movie.

Hanks, Tautou, McKellen and Bettany escape to London where they pick up the trail of the Grail in the cathedral where Sir Isaac Newton is interred. But is the Grail something that can be held in the hand?

Howard does a fair job directing the movie and the performances are uniformly good, albeit Bettany's accent is a little too Inigo Montoya-ish to be taken entirely seriously. But I have two objections to Howard’s direction. If you read the book, you know it’s almost impossible to put down. And while the pace of the film is steady as a heartbeat, it never made my pulse race.

Howard also chooses to depict Bettany’s fanaticism several times by showing him flagellate himself while naked. Everyone who read the book (and everyone else, for that matter) knows what's coming for Bettany's character, so to keep depicting his fanaticism that way was gratuitous.

There’s a lot I’ve glossed over and plenty to anger Christians, especially Catholics.

Nonetheless, I took The Da Vinci Code, (book and movie) to be a yarn, and a good one at that, but not an actual conspiracy, or history, or truth.

Decoded my anagrammatic review of The Da Vinci Code is; “a lot of movie for your dollar.”

The Da Vinci Code is rated PG-13 for “disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content.”

I grade The Da Vinci Code as a C.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. Without the excessive self-flagellation I would have graded it a B+. My grading relies on the fact that I was able to separate the central premise of The Da Vinci Code… which pointedly undermines one of the great religions… from the movie itself. If you can’t do the same, you probably won’t like The Da Vinci Code.

Over the Hedge

I wanted to like Over the Hedge so much that I saw it 1½ times; the first time with my wife and daughters and the second time alone. Daughter number two still isn’t ready for movies, so she and I bonded in the adjoining toy store shortly after the second reel began.

What I hoped to see in Over the Hedge was something that could give Shrek a run for its money. After all, my unofficial role in reviewing these kids movies is as promoter. I want them to be so good that audiences can’t get enough of them and Hollywood is forced to make more.

Instead what I saw was a movie that tries to be good for me, like kale or oat bran or something else loaded with antioxidants and high in nonsoluble fiber.

Over the Hedge starts with a fast-talking raccoon named RJ (Bruce Willis) who, in a fit of late-winter hunger pangs, raids the food cache of Vincent, a hibernating bear voiced with rumbly grumpiness by Nick Nolte. But RJ gets greedy. Just as he’s about to become bear chow, he talks Vincent into a week-long extension if he can replace Vincent’s transfat-laden stores, little red wagon and all.

RJ makes his way to the distant exurbs and insinuates his way into a post-modern family of foraging animals who are surprised to wake up from hibernation to find their forest home now surrounded by 'Rancho Camelot.' High jinks ensue. The family is led by Verne (Garry Shandling) and includes Hammie, a hyperactive squirrel voiced by Steve Carell, a Skunk voiced by stand-up comedienne Wanda Sykes, plus an all-Canadian cast of possums and porcupines that include William Shatner, Avril Lavigne, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara.

The performances are all first-rate, especially Carell. And wasn’t Shatner born to play possum? Allison Janey is also effective as Gladys, the harsh and obsessive home owner’s association president.

The production values are very high and the story has an actual plotline and believable characterizations. This isn’t a movie that tries to be beautiful, but there are several visually good-looking scenes. Plus, there are laughs for both the kiddies and the adults.

But too often, especially in the early going, Over the Hedge tries not to be a kid’s movie so much as a satire meant for the parents in the theater. There’s nothing wrong with satire, in a kid’s movie or any movie. But the satire in Over the Hedge was a little too pointed for my taste. For instance, when the worldly-wise RJ is explaining the human’s obsession with food to his new family.

I get it, we’re all too fat. One of the Girl Scouts and her mother in the movie were too fat, as was the ‘Verminator.’ In the interest of full disclosure, I’m too fat. The news tells me there's 'an epidemic of obesity' every day. Do I really need a cartoon to pile on too? What happened to Mary Poppins and ‘a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down?’

Oh, right. Sugar’s too high in carbs.

Over the Hedge is “rated PG for some rude humor and mild comic action,” by the MPAA, whatever ‘mild comic action’ is.

I give it a grade of A-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. In this movie a B- became an A-, for instance. It could have been an A if they would have spent less time poking fun at fat guys like me.