Nacho Libre (2006)

In which Jared Hess tries to forcibly recapture the dry humor that emanated so effortlessly from the crevices of Napoleon Dynamite. There's scattered laughs, mainly because Jack Black always gives 110%, but the problem is that the characters in Dynamite, no matter how quirky or offbeat their words and actions were, always felt like they could have been genuine people. It gave the film a credibility that eludes a lot of quirk-driven indie comedies (I wave my private parts at Garden State). Here, the characters are about as real as Demi Moore's breasts -- they're flagrant constructs, defined solely by their bizarreness, and the humor suffers for it. The comedic hit-miss ratio is devastating; for every laugh line or strange bit of business (most of which were included in the trailer), there's several that go nowhere or aren't nearly as funny as Hess seems to think. I laughed, I'll admit, but it's probably a bad sign that I can't remember a single thing at which I laughed. Hell, I remember at what I laughed in Bewitched. This film, though... like eggs on Teflon. Actual lucha libre films (i.e. Santo) are far funnier and more worth your time than this.

Grade: C