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Nacho Libre

4 stars out of 5.0
Nacho Libre

When so many comedies try to knock you out with a sheer overload of gags - watching Scary Movie part 4 you have to wonder how long it will be before they start adding a sit-com style laugh track to these things - Nacho Libre turns out to be a pleasingly easygoing affair. The premise is so silly we're already smiling from the get-go, and director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) doesn't worry about forcing the issue.

Mind, I'm not saying it isn't hit and miss, but even the bad jokes contribute to the film's sloppy charm: this is a sweet dumb family comedy that's happy to tickle your funny bone, and if you feel to urge to slap that thigh once or twice, that's okay too.

If you haven't seen the trailer, then you need to know that Jack Black plays Ignacio, a monk who has grown up at a Mexican monastery after being orphaned at an early age. He's never really felt a calling to the priesthood ('They think I do not know a buttload of crap about the Gospel, but I do!' he vows to the beatific Sister Encarnacion), but from an early age he's been drawn to the romance of stretchy pants and face-masks. One day, he prays, he may become a great 'luchador', a wrestling champion. Until then, he's stuck in the kitchen refrying beans.

Nacho Libre

Encarnacion's inadvertent influence and an encounter with skinny street kid Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez) inspire Ignacio to make his dream come true. Swapping his robe for pale blue stockings and red trunks, with mask to match, 'Nacho' storms into the ring. Even when he loses - which is always - at least there is a little extra money for the orphans. But Nacho is disillusioned by the arrogant professional luchadors and disappointed to lose to midgets and grandmothers. He knows his destiny must hold more than this.

The script is a collaboration between Hess, his wife Jerusha, and Mike White (School of Rock), and is loosely based on a Mexican lucha film from 1963, El Senor Tormenta, which in turn inspired a real priest to take up wrestling to save a shelter for homeless children. According to the New York Times, the Rev Sergio Gutierrez Benitez fought more than 1000 bouts under the name Brother Storm, and provided a home to more than 3,000 kids.

A story like that might make for a very different kind of movie, but the goofy Nacho Libre serves as a sincere tribute to this muscular form of altruism without getting overly sanctimonious on us (*Mr and Mrs Hess are Mormons). Nacho is kind to orphans, but it doesn't stop him blowing his first pay cheque on white ankle boots, all the better to romance the nun (or so he imagines).

Nacho Libre

Black affects a soft pseudo Mexican accent for the movie, familiar from old Hollywood movies. It's a ploy that fits well with the ironic quotation marks this actor almost always puts around his dialogue. But Hess has surrounded him with authentic Mexican actors, which mitigates any offence to political correctness and allows us the pleasure of meeting an entirely new cast of eccentric comics, and in any case, the movie has a more forgiving nature than seemed to be the case in Napoleon Dynamite. The naïve but endearing Hector Jimenez is the stand out, and undoubtedly the skinniest wrestler you've ever seen.

To be sure it has the pace of a permanent siesta, but if you're in the mood you won't mind that - though I'm not sure anyone would relish spending quite so much time with Mr Black's generous naked belly. Someone's put a deal of thought into the soundtrack; like the movie it's beyond kitsch and over to the other side.

Tom Charity

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