Do you like Jack Black?

A lot?

Then you'll probably like Nacho Libre.

For myself, I like Jack Black, and I enjoyed the film as a divertimento, but not really much else. It's a summer comedy, which means that you've more or less forgotten it by the time you leave the theater, sooner if like me you sit through the end credits. But for the 90 minutes you're sitting in the theater, it's an affable and agreeable experience. Minimally, given the choice at the multiplex between this, The Break-Up and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, it's an easy recommendation, although I suppose one could argue that given such a choice the best option is to refrain from seeing a movie. That would be an irrational argument, and I shall not deign to answer it.

Black plays Brother Ignacio, the cook at a Franciscan orphanage in Oaxaca. With that sentence, I have engaged in more sociological commentary than the film does. (Best, I think, to ignore the racial-politic elephant in the room: yeah, it's a bit offensive, and the film has a rather juvenile approach to Mexican signifiers, but I'm willing to cut stupid films more slack than smart ones). Ignacio has long desired to be a wrestler on the lucha libre circuit, having held on to a costume design since he was himself a small orphan. Events come to a head with the arrival of Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reuguera, who appears to have been cast largely because of her physical resemblance to Penélope Cruz), instilling in Ignacio a desire to follow the way of the secular flesh. To impress the sister, he dons a luchador's costume, and enters the ring under the name of Nacho. Along the way, he begins to fight to win prize money for the orphans, tricky because of his constant inability to win.

The plot of the film has precisely zero surprises, but this is quite irrelevant. In order for the film to work, it has to provide Jack Black with opportunities to speak in a strange cod-Mexican accent and prance around in tights. Both of which he does with considerable aplomb. And may I salute Black for the fearlessness with which he showcases his flabby man-tits for the camera. If you've seen the trailer, you have in fact seen the funniest lines in the film, which means that if you found the trailer unamusing, viewing the film will be an exercise in suffering like to Job's.

The film is directed by Jared Hess, he of Napoleon Dynamite, which I have not seen and remain staunchly unlikely to. I am told, though, that his earlier film is notable largely for how cruel, even hateful it is to its characters, and I find with some relief that such is not the case here. Actually, that's not true. The script is certainly generous to the characters, treating them perhaps as dumb children, but as children whose dumbness should be hugged and embraced and encouraged. I believe this is not due to co-writers Hess and his wife Jerusha, but to their collaborator Mike White, who wrote School of Rock a considerably better vehicle for Black's talents, across every meaning of the word "better." This generosity does not extend to Hess's direction, which does seem to linger on the humiliations and punishments of the characters: the fight scenes in particular seem to dote on the images of Black getting punched in the balls, kicked in the balls, and generally done-to in the balls. And throughout, any moment in which Black is caused damage is likely to be more drawn-out than a moment in which he is not. Through cruelty we find comedy, I suppose.

Besides this tendency, there is nothing to suggest that Hess is aware that directing a movie can be about more than telling a script's story. A short while ago, I groused that I should be the same age that he was when directing Napoleon Dynamite, and yet I be so very far from a similar achievement. It was pointed out to me that liberal atheist indie filmmakers aren't exactly "rare," but that Hess was a Mormon, and the Mormons needed all the directors they could find. And it is certainly true that his directing style speaks to someone being encouraged for a reason other than native talent. I wonder if perhaps his Mormonism might be called upon to explain the weird stress on Ignacio's Catholicism in Nacho Libre, although it's probably only there because, y'know, Mexicans are Catholic.

And apparently they fart a lot.

6/10