Review of Nacho Libre (2006) by Jeff B — 16 Jul 2010

In Napoleon Dynamite, director Jared Hess gave moviegoers an unforgettable character in Napoleon, the fantastically gawky Utah teenager living a seemingly cartoonish existence. In Nacho Libre, Hess gives them an unbelievable caricature with Nacho (Black), an impossibly cartoonish oaf. With Napoleon, the audience can identify with the fish-out-of-water doldrums of surviving the teenage years, even though they never fed a llama or owned a pair of nun-chucks. With Nacho, possibly only the Three Amigos can identify with a buffoonish Caucasian trying his hand at Lucha Libre, the underground world of Mexican wrestling. There are a few ripe laughs, yes, but Hess ultimately tries too hard, going for the deliberate pratfall and unleashing Black to mug unmercifully for the camera.

In this PG-13-rated comedy, a Mexican seminarian (Black) moonlights as a masked wrestling phenomenon to help a financially-strapped orphanage.

Like his contemporaries Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) and Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), Hess has demonstrated a deft hand at conjuring-with amazingly imaginative flourishes--a unique world steeped in its own intrinsic eccentricity, albeit somehow still anchored in reality. Anderson and Anderson also gave moviegoers slight creative misfires Punch-Drunk Love (P.T.) and The Life Aquatic (Wes), movies in which the architects became a tad too immersed in their eccentric canvases, leaving the audience adrift in the ether looking for something tangible to grasp. Nacho Libre falls into this ring, er, category.

Bottom line: Send back this nacho platter.