I watched Napoleon Dynamite, director Jared Hess’ second movie and the movie used to promote Nacho Libre, and I loved it.
The thing is, it’s one of those movies which you’d probably feel you shouldn’t have liked. I’ve always been big on movies with good stories, and Napoleon Dynamite is the opposite. It’s a hodgepodge of almost unrelated skits and situations, like those Tito, Vic and Joey movies of yore, where the chief character(s) just bounce around from scene to scene and something funny happens.
The saving grace is Napoleon himself, played by Jon Heder, who exudes dorkability to the extreme. He’s not a geek. He’s not a misunderstood nice guy. He’s a complete dweeb at the ultimate level, the kind of guy you couldn’t get far away enough from in school. So who cared about the disjointed skits? Napoleon Dynamite is such an insufferable dork you’re replaying his scenes, buying his t-shirts and voting for Pedro months after the movie (incidentally you’d have to have watched it to understand what that meant).
And now here’s Jack Black on Nacho Libre, playing a lonely friar in charge of a rundown orphanage, harboring dreams of becoming a Luchador. Now, there are very few people nearly as funny as Jack Black. He can walk down the street, eat popcorn, or just sit and stare at you, and you’d be laughing as tears stream from your eyes. He’s even been criticized as the wrong choice for his role in King Kong, which is probably right, because you’re almost expecting him to do something silly everytime.
He is every bit as colorful a character as Heder’s Napoleon to pull off a similar hodgepodge kind of movie
However, although you can’t give Black fault as he gives it as good a try as he can, I think this one falls short of becoming the classic Napoleon Dynamite has become. Dynamite is a comedy for sure, but is almost an off-off-offshoot branch of one. It’s a movie about nothing, featuring an unlovable, dumbass-like main character, with no solid goal as it meanders pointlessly along. You do not feel especially fond of the guy, so you don’t care when bad things happen to him. He’s not doing anything special, nor are the other characters as well.
Nacho Libre however, went back to original comedy roots, where the main character is a good guy with a good goal – to win money for his orphans. He’s even got a love interest in Penelope Cruz lookalike Ana de la Reguera, and a second banana in Héctor Jiménez.
Something in that disparity makes Libre an ordinary comedy, whereas Dynamite is cult-classic stuff. It may have to do with the fact that the former is a new genre, similar to Jim Jarmusch type of stuff. Or maybe it’s like when a man trips on a banana peel by accident, it’s funny, but when you see lights, a camera and a script, it isn’t. With Dynamite, the comedy hits you hard because you do not expect it. With Libre, Jack Black is supposed to be funny, so you wait for the punchlines.
Having said all that (and yeah that was a lot), Nacho Libre is still, without comparison to anything, very funny. Jack Black’s rendition of ‘Encarnacion’ will have you in stitches, and Hector Jimenez and him running around in tights is ridiculous to look at. You’ll have a good time, because it’s funny. Just not as funny.
Technorati Tags: nacho libre, jack black, hector jimenez, jim jarmusch, jon heder, napoleon dynamite, encarnacion, ana de la reguera, penelope cruz, comedy, lucha libre, luchadores, jared hess
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i think you should make a full-blown napoleon dynamite review too :)it's obvious that you really want to :)