Nacho Libre

In moving beyond the low-low-budget Sundance find Napoleon Dynamite and into the world of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, Jared Hess and his co-writer and wife Jerusha have made a few fatal errors. In retrospect, it's clear that the success of Dynamite stems from its essentially sweet nature and its modest ambition. A movie that defines low-key, idiosyncratic comedy, Dynamite presents a world of freaky weirods that oddly endearing. I felt like leaving the theater after 5 minutes when I first saw it, but then when it was over, I kind of wanted to see it again right away.

Perhaps Hess' childhood friend Jon Heder, who played Napoleon, was really the great comedian behind that particular nation-wide phenomenon, or maybe Hess just can't connect emotionally to the world of Mexican wrestling as he did with a coming-of-age story set in Idaho. Whatever the reason, Nacho Libre is a completely embarrassing mess, the kind of movie people will recall in 10 years when asked if they've ever walked out in the middle of a movie.

"I don't think so, I usually stick around to...Wait, we did leave Nacho Libre. After about 3 scenes. I think we snuck into something else that was playing...Maybe that animated one with the escaped animals...No, the other one...No, the other one..."



Some critics have called Nacho a "children's film." This is being kind. It's not that anything in the movie has been specifically designed with children in mind. (In fact, it's general air of crude misanthropy and reliance on violence for humor is exactly the tone you would want to avoid in a kid's flick). It's just that these kinds of doody and fat jokes only work on 8 year olds. And that's only if you get them all cranked up on Pixy Sticks and extra-large Dr. Peppers.

The entire movie is like a bad, offensive "Saturday Night Live" skit gone horribly awry. Fat, stupid Ignacio (Jack Black) works as the cook in the Mexican monastery/orphangage where he grew up. After a beautiful nun (Ana de la Reguera) comes to stay at the orphanage, Ignacio dreams of impressing her by becoming a Luchador, one of the masked wrestlers who make all the money and get all the girls. To realize his ambitions, he joins forces with a feral idiot (Hector Jimenez) who eats tortilla chips off the ground. Eventualy, he will become the famed Nacho Libre and take on the most famous and evil Luchador in all of Mexico, Ramses (Cesar Gonzalez).
The script, written by the Hesses and Mike White, methodically avoids the charm and carefully-observed humanity of Napoleon Dynamite. Those characters were quirky, but it was clear from the start that they were also meant to be lovable. Napoleon is a liar and an oddball and a whiner, but we also see that he's reacting to a lifetime of frustration and loneliness, and we root for him to come out of his shell and begin to relate to those around him.

No one in Nacho Libre is in the least bit likable. Some characters, like Nacho himself, are downright unpleasant, but most have no personalities at all. Many of them are fat and exist only to be the subject of cruel, bullying humor. (For no good reason, a fat woman is required to crawl through a amkeshift hole in the wall in order to chase a man. Get it? She's horny because no one will touch her because she's so disgustingly fat!)

The fat jokes are constant and eventually hugely unpleasant, particularly when the target is the overweight orphan Chancho (Darius Rose). What kind of a man would make an entire film poking repeated fun at a fat kid? I'm certain there are circumstances in which a shot of a fat child would be funny, but to constantly resort back to such a cutting, mean-spirited ploy for cheap laughs is not only bad filmmaking but kind of makes Jared Hess a bad person.

Where did this judgemental side come from? It's nowhere evident in Napoleon Dynamite, an extremely laid-back and accepting kind of movie. That's a film speaking to the pleasure of discovering the eccentric personalities of your friends and family, of accepting people for who they are and loving the peculiarities that make us human. Napoleon and Kip spar in the beginning, only to come to a mutual fraternal understanding by the end. Napoleon even finds a way to make the school appreciate him, to rise above his classmates abuse and earn their respect through his courageous sacrifice on behalf of a friend.

In Nacho Libre, everyone's poor and fat and gross and ugly and stupid and pompous and full of shit. No one is redeemable. An entire sub-plot concerns Nacho's attempts to forcibly convert his atheist trainer and friend. In fact, an argument in favor of faith is just one of the actually interesting themes Hess brings up only to dismiss in favor of more fat jokes. A case could even be made that the film is racist, depicting Mexico as a large dirt-ridden impoverished slum in which everyone is a sweaty rube with horrible hygeine. If Hess has any real love of the country of Mexico, the Mexican people or Lucha Libre, it's not evident from this film, which comes only to mock these individuals and their culture.

During the film's many unfunny and tedious wrestling matches, there are repeated shots of a grizzled old man with a crazy eye by the side of the ring. Why do we return to him again and again? He says nothing at all except occasionally yelping "Nacho!" He serves no function for the story. He's not involved in any running gags or large ensemble jokes. He's just funny looking. Jared Hess thinks old Mexicans look amusing and he likes showing them in close-ups to get laughs from superior-feeling whites.

I hated Nacho Libre and I don't even really want to talk about it any more. It's unpleasant and dumb and not funny at all and it's sheer desperation made me feel uncomfortabler. Jack Black's a gifted comedian, and he tries his best to lighten things up by flopping around all over the place and singing his patented wacky songs, but I'm not sure 100 Peter Sellers clones would be up to the job of salvaging this wanktastrophe. Is this film worse than Date Movie? That will be one of the chief questions to consider when compiling my Bottom 10 of 2006.