Nacho Libra low blows audiences with stupidity.

Rating: 4/10 (19 February 2013)

I find it interesting that Hollywood would make a comedy movie about Mexico's culture with a predominately Hispanic cast, only to cast the lead role as a recognizable white Male with the joke being that he playing a Mexican. There are far more funny Latino comedians they can use, rather than casting Jack Black as the main role. Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite fame directs Jack Black as Ignacio, a young man who works as a cook in the Mexican monastery where he was raised. When the institution faces a financial crisis, Igancio decide that he must do God's work, by competing in a local Lucha Libra (pro-wrestling) tournament under the character of Nacho the Luchador. Donning a spandex outfit, mask, and cape, to protect his identity from getting catch by the Church. Nacho decides he can do that and enlists the aid of a local vagrant, Esqueleto (Hector Jiminez) to be his wrestling partner. Hector Jiminez is super skinny, as Jack Black is fat. Most of the jokes will be about their weights and how gross they are. A couple of fart jokes. A diarrhea joke. A "wipe my face" joke. He struts around in tight sweatpants and no shirt through a significant portion of the film; not a pretty sight. They begin to lose their freshness after multiply times and it becomes a tiresome joke. Kids will love it, mature adults not so much. Some funny and unfunny tasteless jokes indeed. The movie is so crude, that they even named one of the children in the monastery, 'Chancho' which means Pig due to the fact he's overweight. Chancho is the only person who knows that Ignacio is Nacho. The plot is that Igancio need the money to make better food, clearly seeing all the fat children in the monastery, I think they need less food. Nacho tries to save the monastery while trying to win the heart of a woman of the cloth, Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera) a celebrity look-a-like rip off of Penelope Cruz. What is most remarkable about this morally-bankrupt movie is its obvious impropriety of a monk constantly soliciting a nun for sex. Though it try to create humor by mocking old practices of church it, it does not condemn religion though Ignacio's sexual appetite. Still, people in religion can feel offensive to few of its jokes. This movie is based on a real priest, Rev. Sergio Gutierrez Benitez. whom ring name is Fray Tormenta ("Friar Storm" in Spanish) and he does wrestle under the mask in Mexico to support an orphanage. He inspired characters ranging from King from Tekken, to Crasher Wake to Pokemon. This movie is not a tribute to him, as there are far better movies such as 1991, French movie L'Homme au masque d'or (The Man In The Golden Mask) starring Jean Reno. Even, Fray Tormenta appeared in the film 2007 Padre Tormenta as a priest who dons the luchador's mask and enters the ring to raise funds for the orphanage he directs was better than this movie. Nacho Libre, naively made kids' stuff, lacks such minor attributes as a decent script. The film sports an whimsy and melancholy in the first 20 minutes and continues to be somewhat a downer. The later half of the movie feels formulaic and conventional, the joyous spontaneity lost as Ignacio continues to fail and fail. Jared Hess directs the movie with the same colors & visuals as Dynamite, but fails to present properly Mexico culture. Hess perpetuating stereotypes for some sort of comic purpose in this film. The manner in which he depicts Mexicans with the bad teeth and the tacky squalor is also something that many would find offensive. Actually, the accent Jack Black used in the movie is called the bandito accent. That accent has been used for ages in Hollywood when representing Mexicans on film. It's quite a different accent from the accent from Mexicans and and a lot more different than the accent used by people from Spain. It's as different as the English accent used in Britain, Australia and the US. It's appear both racist & making fun of Mexico even if it's not the movie's intention. This movie wrestles with a lot of issues, and get pin to the count of 3, because of it.