How you respond to Nacho Libre, a sweet-hearted, unpretentious comedy from the director of Napoleon Dynamite, depends on several variables. If you hate the sight of Jack Black in his undies and despised School Of Rock, then best keep walking towards the IFI for Luis Mandoki’s fine Salvadoran civil war drama. If the surreal spazzploitation of Jared Hess’s earlier film left you feeling discombobulated and slightly nauseous, then the chubby orphans and absurdly grimy Mexicans of Nacho Libre will not, we predict, be your cup of tea. If you find pointedly silly accents offensive, well, I’m sure there’s an anti-Mel Gibson rally that needs you more than this film. And if the idea of a monk (Black) dressing up as a wrestler to save an orphanage and bag a ludicrously beautiful nun (Ana de la Reguera) sounds criminally idiotic, then you should probably skip the movie and stop reading this column altogether. You’re a long way from home.
No. As far as we’re concerned, Nacho Libre has everything to make you squirt Fanta through your nose. It has men hitting each other over the head with chairs. It has strange large ladies burrowing through tunnels. It boasts the weirdest looking on-screen specimens since Freaks. It has Jack Black at his most buffoonish. Look! He’s wearing white ankle boots and polyester turquoise slacks. You can’t argue with that kind of material. The drily hilarious script, knocked together by Jared, wife Jerusha and Mike White (Chuck And Buck,School Of Rock), even manages to wring laughs and ultraviolence from corn-on-the-cob with a blob of mayo.
Like Napoleon, Nacho benefits from waywardly slow pacing and a mesmerising weirdness. One thinks of Peckinpah’s Mexico – the libidinal bit below the waistline of the USA. Mr. Hess’ Mexico is the big fat rear end for falling on. Beyond that vague analogy, the setting is indeterminate. Is this the ‘70s? Is this even Earth? It’s hard to tell when the entire supporting cast look like gargoyles. Unsurprisingly, Beck, harking back to the nonsense-folk of his earliest albums, chips in with a stupidly entertaining soundtrack.
Who knew that a nice Mormon couple and a Scientologist would preside over the funniest movie since Dodgeball?