NACHO LIBRE A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Stupid. Very stupid. Director Jared Hess, in his second film after his surprising hit with the low budget NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, again makes a movie about a would-be lovable loser. Attempting to parody a sport that uses metal chairs for weapons, NACHO LIBRE skewers the world of wrestling, telling the story of Nacho Libre. Nacho is a monk by day at a Mexican orphanage and a wrestler in secret at night. Unlike the extensively choreographed and scripted WWE, the wrestling in the movie is free form and supposedly real, even if the characters are uniformly ridiculous. (The film is set in a Mexico in which most but not all people speak English, much like its northern neighbor.)
Jack Black, a talented actor who is completely wasted, plays Nacho with all of the unrestrained ham in him. This dirty, crude and frequently disgusting movie is rated PG since it carefully avoids crossing certain lines. Rubbing fecal matter across someone's face is apparently okay so long as sexual situations are avoided. This isn't, however, a movie that most parents will want to take their kids to, although the level of humor seems designed only for our inner six-year-old crudeness.
Jack is part of a tag team with Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez), a Mexican peasant with exceedingly bad and dirty teeth. Looking like an ad for a relief organization or a poster boy for Anorexics Anonymous, Esqueleto is a scrawny guy who is pursued by an especially chubby local lass.
As the wrestlers engage in activities ranging from nipple pinching to hair pulling and hair biting, it's hard to stay interested in the story. The teams Nacho and Esqueleto fight include a pair who appear to be Ewoks crossed with the monsters from GREMLINS.
Most of the jokes, ranging from diarrhea to the dead guy who really isn't, are ones you've seen before. Even the more original ones aren't ones you'll want to see again. When we first meet Nacho, he is in the process of puking bad food through his nose. It's an image you'd like to get out of your mind but will have difficulty doing.
You'll probably be groaning while audience members, especially those under the age of seven, are roaring. But is it fingers-across-the-blackboard bad as NAPOLEON DYNAMITE was? Nope. It's only slightly better.
NACHO LIBRE runs a very long 1:31. It is rated PG for "some rough action, and crude humor including dialogue" and would be acceptable for kids around 9 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, June 12, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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