Nacho Libre
A couple of years ago, I finished a review of ``Napoleon Dynamite" with the words ``What remains to be seen is whether director Jared Hess has another movie in him -- a real movie, about real people."
With ``Nacho Libre," the jury's still out.
Some fussbudgets might want to get their dander up about this film, since star Jack Black is essentially doing a brownface routine as a low-level Mexican monk who dreams of being a masked wrestler. (He's not literally wearing makeup, thankfully, but the performance is still pitched at the level of Bill Dana's old Jose Jiminez character on '60s TV.)
``Nacho Libre" just isn't worth the bother, though. Very broad and very silly, it's a doodle of a comedy -- a one-joke idea (fat guy goes luchador) padded out to feature length by Black's willingness to do anything for a laugh.
He plays Ignacio, a woebegone friar at a rural orphanage who cooks daily doses of black-bean glop for the kids. (One asks, ``Couldn't we have a nice salad someday?") Moved by the appearance of a new nun, the lovely Sister Incarnacion (Ana de la Reguera -- Hess films her entrance as if it were the appearance of a saint in a 1950s religious film), Ignacio dons cape and mask and appears in the local arena as Nacho Libre, a wrestler of singular incompetence.
That's really all there is to the plot, and when the narrative stalls -- which it does, often -- Black strikes an idiot pose or flexes his tushie or (in the film's one moment of truly inspired lunacy) warbles a love song for Incarnacion that could be an outtake from one of Black's old Tenacious D records. Say what you will, the man knows he's a human punch line and acts accordingly.
So, yes, there are some decent, if callow, giggles to be had, as well as a genial sense of the bizarre that takes the sting out of the proceedings. When Nacho has to fight two midgets in lion costumes -- they resemble deranged Ewoks -- you marvel both at the absurdity of the scene and the film's deadpan refusal to take it any further. The image is the joke, so why bother with comic invention?
Since Hess uses the same uninflected tone that made ``Napoleon Dynamite" a hit in middle schools across the country, though, Black's exertions unfold in a void. At times, it's like watching a stand-up comic at a wake.
The director sure loves his freaks, though. He films the lumpy, cross-eyed Oaxacan peasants head on, like found objects at a roadside tourist stand, and he revels in the scrawny physique and jelly-lipped grin of Nacho's tag-team partner, Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez, who gets off a few good lines about his faith in science over religion).
``Nacho Libre" also spends a good deal of time with one of the orphans, a pint-size human bowling ball named Chancho (Darius Rose), and a wrestling promoter's obese daughter (Carla Jimenez), who has a crush on Esqueleto and literally tunnels through walls to get at him.
Racism, general misanthropy, or fond celebration of life's misfits? Discuss. It should be pointed out that the characters here are no less geeky or gawked at than anyone in ``Napoleon Dynamite," but also that ``Napoleon" took place in Idaho, the Utah-based director's backyard, and that goofing on nerds of other countries is dangerous business. In the end, ``Nacho Libre" isn't exempt because it's a comedy but because it's piffle. Dig up a ``Love and Rockets" comics compilation -- one featuring Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar stories -- if you want small-town Mexicans who are foolish, noble, absurd, and human.
Here, you have to settle for Jack Black pursing his lips and shaking his man-boobs , for tatty wrestling smackdowns and cow pies in the face. What remains to be seen is whether Jared Hess has a movie in him aimed at anyone over 13 years old.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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