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-.