NACHO LIBRE A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2006 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
If, like me, you're partial to a nice nacho you'll likely enjoy Jack Black's cheesy--and occasionally flatulent--friar in "Nacho Libre."
For this "Nacho'" comes courtesy of those responsible for "Napoleon Dynamite," that stir-causer from two years back about a goofball teenager helping his high school friend's bid for class presidency.
Many loved Napoleon, yet equal numbers hated (or simply didn't get) him. Nacho (née Ignacio) is unlikely to polarize audiences that same way. He's certainly easier to "get" and, while tempted and conflicted by those devils in the flesh, Nacho is essentially a good guy looking out for the kids at the orphanage monastery at which he works as head cook (and, I daresay, bottle washer).
Oaxaca, Mexico circa sometime last week, and Nacho can be found serving up refritos with "garnish" when all that the orphans really want is "just like a salad." A pretty new teacher arrives, Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera, a kinder, gentler Penélope Cruz type), and Nacho wonders if she might like to join him in his quarters for some... toast! From those toast points on Nacho secretly carries a torch for the virginal-seeming Sister, wishing they could be *libre* of their vows and chaste away together.
Speaking of Nacho's quarters the macho man of God is no sprig muslin. That descriptor best befits Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez), the skeletal, day-old tortilla chip snatching street rat whom Nacho recruits as his tag team partner soon after spotting a cowled wrestler-- Ramses--surrounded by adoring fans. "I would like that kind of respect," ruminates Nacho in a questionable south-of-the-border accent, believing that by becoming a mysterious cloaked wrestler by night his orphans could benefit from his share of the spoils by day--a bus, field trips, salad, etc.
But deep down perhaps it has more to do with his love for tight- fitting trousers. "When you are a man," he tells a similarly portly orphan who stumbles upon his wrestling attire, "sometimes you wear stretchy pants. It's for fun."
Co-producer Black would seem to have no shame herein. Whether he pulled a "Raging Bull" and gained severe poundage for the role is open to debate: what's less questionable is said poundage as distributed across the silver screen in all its flaccid, flabby (and, at times, slo- mo) glory. Likewise Black mangles Mexican (Spanish) and Mexicans (as the masked luchadore Nacho) with comic ease and even manages to sneak in a hysterical vocal performance--did I mention the film was co- written by the author of "The School of Rock" (along with "'Dynamite" scribes Jared and Jerusha Hess, the former of whom directs)?
But most of all "Nacho Libre" is good, clean, honest fun (with, perhaps, the singular exception of one inappropriate use of a corncob). That, and the film manages to be oddly sweet throughout with Black (from the afore-mentioned "'School of Rock," "Envy," "Shallow Hal," and Pete Jackson's colossal "'Kong") in his element as a maligned man of the cloth turned masked man of spandex. It's silly in the extreme but so authentically so you can't help but raise a serious chuckle.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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