First time I have ever walked out of a movie...

Rating: 1/10 (30 June 2006)

I am not an enormous fan of Napolean Dynamite, but I enjoyed it. It made me laugh. Nacho Libre, on the other hand, is a missed opportunity. It has a great premise and a funny star, but the jokes are so unbearably predictable that it is actually just boring. For instance, they spend maybe five minutes on this whole set-up (wasting an appearance by the brilliant Peter Storemare) about getting the eagle egg so that Nacho can get super wrestling abilities, and the punchline is...the eggs doesn't work and they get beat up again. You know what would have been a funnier gag here? Anything! Anything is funnier than nothing. Or how about the insanely tired gag where Nacho's partner agrees to bring some men to pretend to jump Nacho in the street, so he can pretend to beat them up and impress the pretty nun (who by the way is a completely undeveloped and superfluous character). What do you suppose happens here? Nacho attacks the wrong guys and gets his ass kicked. Did you see that coming? Congratulations! You are now a professional Hollywood screenwriter! Or when Nacho goes to tend to a sick man, he arrives and the man appears dead, so Nacho places coins over his eyes and performs a brief memorial service. But surprise!!! The guy is not dead!! He wakes up and the coins fall off and that is the end of the scene. He doesn't say anything, there is no punchline...the scene just ends...abruptly. There are no transitions between sequences at all. One sloppy punchline is jammed jarringly right up against the next lazy set-up. In general the editing seems extremely uncertain, as do many of the performances including at times Jack Black. It was as if everyone involved was constantly asking themselves, "Is this really funny?" No. No it is not.