Wrestling comedy to the ground. Jack Black is no “Rocky.” Sure, “Nacho Libre” has Black climbing into the ring as an underdog, looking to his true love for inspiration and grappling a bigger man. But the comedian’s humanity spills over his spandex like 3 pounds of chips in a 2-pound bag. So let’s call him “Husky.”
“Nacho Libre” is as Husky does. The movie dips only as far into the hot cheese as Black can take it without benefit of a script.
Turns out that’s not very deep. High concept still fails without writers filling in the blank spots, and “Jack Black in wrestling tights” is funny for about as long as the trailer you’ve already seen.
Writer-director Jared Hess is the name that gave us such high hopes for a comedy smackdown, yet here the sensibility behind “Napoleon Dynamite” turns out to be more problem than solution. Hess revels in tight, lingering close-ups of odd faces, with long pauses meant as a nudge-nudge to the audience that we should appreciate the strange when it’s set before us.
“Napoleon” paid off by taking us to a painfully normal Idaho town so close to our own world that it paradoxically seemed like a different universe.
But Hess’s Mexican hill town for “Nacho Libre” is too distant for us to know exactly when to laugh. With his silly Mexican accent – Ricardo Montalban meets Monty Python – is Jack Black making fun of himself, or something bigger? How many poo jokes is this talented writing team allowed before we go from PG to Pre-Juvenile?
And is it ever OK for a novice priest to be hot for Sister? Methinks the Vatican ought to leave poor Leonardo da Vinci alone and start keeping an eye on comedies.
For all Nacho’s bulging flesh, the story is as skinny as Nacho’s bony partner, Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez). Nacho grows up in a Catholic orphanage, dreaming of becoming a famed masked wrestler on Mexico’s campy “Lucha Libre” circuit.
The monks forbid wrestling as worshipping false idols, a point perhaps undercut by the graveyard saints on whom Nacho practices his moves. Later, training to become a priest, Nacho is the orphanage cook whose budget allows him to produce only a positively satanic version of refried beans.
Nacho must don a mask and fight to win money for fresh vegetables! Oh, and Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera) will get to see him in form-fitting pants.
The writers apparently couldn’t shake from their minds the so-very-wrong image of Black in a cape, shirtless underneath. If any team could pull it off, this one could: Hess co-writing with his wife and “Napoleon” partner Jerusha Hess, and Mike White, who put such smart-stupid humor into “School of Rock” and “Orange County.”
Alas, Nacho is not so Libre that he can soar to comic heights – at least not with this sleeper-hold of a script.
When the pauses between jokes seem overly long, the team seems happy to let Black riff in now-familiar ways. He sings a rock-opera song about Sister Encarnacion – don’t look for the full version on Univision anytime soon – that appears at once ad-libbed and cribbed from his show-stopping prance in “School of Rock.”
Black is one of those rare comedians who’s funny just to look at, but even the best jokesters need new material now and then. Nacho Dynamite, Napoleon Libre, you never quite fly off those turnbuckles.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
| “Nacho Libre”
PG for adult language, adult content|1 hour, 31 minutes|COMEDY|Directed by Jared Hess; written by Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess and Mike White; starring Jack Black, Ana de la Reguera, Hector Jimenez, Richard Montoya and Peter Stormare|Opens today at area theaters.
Jack’s in the black
Jack Black stars in “Nacho Libre,” opening today, a movie some predict could be the breakout comedy of the summer. Here’s a look on how Black is faring so far at the box office (first figure is total domestic gross, second is opening weekend, in millions unless otherwise noted):
1. King Kong $218.8
$50.1, 2005
2. Shark Tale (voice) $160.9
$47.6, 2004
3. School of Rock $81.3
$19.6, 2003
4. Shallow Hal $70.8
$22.5, 2001
5. Orange County $41.1
$15.1, 2002
BOXOFFICEMOJO.COM
