Nacho funny

Noel Vera

It is supposed to be a comedy, this pelicula of Jared Hess, but it
is false and impure where it should be good and true. It is
featuring this comedian very famous in his country, this Jack Black;
he is amusing enough, but here he is left to himself with very
little to do than clench his buttocks and shake his hairless
nipples. It is a movie called "Nacho Libre" (2006) a movie popular
among the Norteamericanos, and I cannot understand why this is so.

The story of this entertainment, such as it is, is thus: Nacho,
played by Mr. Black, is a part-Mexican, part-Scandinavian cocinero
who serves inedible bowls of frijoles topped with tortillas fritas
to the unhappy orphans and monks of a monastery. The food is
inedible because he is given no money to buy good frijoles, while
his fritas are always being stolen by a wild man named Esqueleto
(Hector Jimenez). At the same time Nacho has a secret wish to be a
luchador, a masked wrestler; he pursues this dream by tearing
fringes from the tablecloths and bed sheets from the clotheslines,
pulling a mask over his head and tight red underwear up his hose,
and entering the ring. Nacho is also drawn to the beautiful Sister
Encarnacion, played by Ana de la Reguera, star of many telenovelas,
and much of what he does is done out of love for her.

All this leads one to expect mucho entertenimiento but for some
reason the picture, much like Nacho in the ring, remains lying on
the mat, unable to rise. It flails about and flops on its belly, and
on occasion is be able to get up on its knees, but soon topples to
one side. It does not seem to know what it wants to do next, or even
what it wants to be; it is helpless as a child.

Much of the fault must lie with the director, a Norteamericano
telling a story set in Mexico with a mostly Latino crew, and a
mostly Latino cast. The previous picture of Mr. Hess, "Napoleon
Dynamite," was popular, I am guessing, because the viewers were
charmed by awkward characters and clumsy filmmaking. They thought it
funny that Mr. Hess' idea of funny was to stand someone in the
middle of the screen and leave him there, idling, for minutes at a
time. They thought it funny that his idea of funny was using the
screen much like the page of a comic book, with people walking in
from left and exiting right, or telling a joke by panning from setup
to punch line--the idea that there is space before and behind the
characters does not seem to occur to him. But clumsiness created by
a filmmaker's skill and clumsiness created by a filmmaker's lack of
skill are two very different things: the former can change at any
time, to fit any new work, while the latter is all that the
filmmaker knows, and will repeat again and again from picture to
picture. Having seen this and having seen the same awkwardness with
little change or improvement, I believe Mr. Hess has clumsiness of
the latter kind.

But it is not just his estilo that is flawed; the way he tells his
cuento makes you ask many questions, few of which are answered.
Several times Nacho, rebuked by his fraile superiors, storms away
angry, but his outbursts have little or no consequence. Could not
the brothers simply dismiss him? He is constantly being beaten in
the various lucha matches, and in the end (please, do not read to
the end of this paragraph if your intention is to see the picture--
though I cannot imagine why) is victorious--how? Lucha libre is of
course really more a show than a sport, and it would be simpler to
explain that Nacho became a luchador because he had a good gimmick--
the use of a crucifijo to beat the heads of his opponents, or a
rosario to strangle them, or that he was victorious thanks to
rigorous training--but no; Mr. Hess has to show Nacho's true love
coming into the arena, sending a great surge of energy and skill
coursing through his limbs, and causing him to defeat his enemy with
much ease.

Nacho earlier invites Sister Encarnacion to his room to "eat toast,"
and she obeys him without question, something surely no woman of
good standing, much less a nun, would do. When Nacho asks her about
herself, Encarnacion gives a reply of the kind given by beauty
contestants or porn stars of shallow mind when being
interviewed: "my favorite color is light tan. My favorite animal is
puppies. I like serving the lord." You expect Encarnacion to be
revealed as a fake, a prostituta perhaps taking refuge behind the
habit, but Hess does not even exploit this possibility. She is left
as much a cipher as when she is introduced, very pretty, but with
very little that strikes you as interesting or mysterious
underneath.

"Nacho Libre" is, in the end, an odd comedia, but not odd enough and
not funny enough to be a very memorable one. It is mildly insulting
to the Latino race--not only is the salad considered more nutritious
than the frijole (which is rich in proteins and antioxidants), but
those with the most ethnic faces are condemned to look grotesque or
ugly, while those with the most mestizo faces appear glamorous or
sympathetic. We are thankful that it contains very little of the
usual Hollywood type of comedy, but we are not so thankful that it
contains little of anything else. Again, like Nacho during one of
his matches, you feel not so much excited as enervated, unable to
get up from the mat.

(First published in Businessworld, 7/21/06)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)