Nacho Libre: Critic Reviews

It's happened to all of us. You get revved to see a big Hollywood comedy, starring an actor so funny he could make you laugh in your sleep, and you're disappointed. Majorly.

In his endearingly ridiculous new comedy, Jack Black plays a half-Mexican, half-Scandinavian monastery cook from Oaxaca who moonlights as a masked wrestler.

What is missing in plot and character development is made up for in silly fun.

Is it funny? Now and then. Stupid? Very. Racist? Possibly. Ugly? Profoundly. Wild? Undeniably. Singular? Completely.

Very broad and very silly, it's a doodle of a comedy -- a one-joke idea (fat guy goes luchador) padded out to feature length by Black's willingness to do anything for a laugh.

[It] isn't an entirely unpleasant experience, which is to say it doesn't feel as though it's worn out its welcome before the second reel. It takes slightly longer before its gears begin to slip and its jokes begin to wear and its laughs begin to fade.

Nacho Libre scores points only on occasion.

A spongy guy in a clingy suit who has a spongy hairdo is funny, to a point, and kudos to Black for the self-deprecation. Kudos as well for his athleticism and balletic grace as he leaps around the ring. Unfortunately, they can't support a movie.

Nacho Libre is more lazy than offensive. Things happen, but there's really no story. People do stuff, but they don't become characters. It might have made a dandy Saturday Night Live skit. But it's not much of a movie.

High concept still fails without writers filling in the blank spots, and 'Jack Black in wrestling tights' is funny for about as long as the trailer you've already seen.

The movie is semi-infantile camp but often riotous.

Nacho Libre, naively made kids' stuff, lacks such minor attributes as a decent script and supporting cast.

It takes some doing to make a Jack Black comedy that doesn't work. But Nacho Libre does it.

Nacho Libre may settle for too little, but at least it isn't a miserable high-concept vanity project.

The beautifully shot Nacho Libre presents its improbable hero -- doughy, boyish and speaking in a dubious accent -- as someone utterly confident of his abilities, and his place in the world.

Ridiculous as it may sound, this is a comedy about a man whose good intentions lead him into temptation and out again. Viva Nacho!

Nacho Libre is a funny idea for a skit that's been put on the rack and tortured into a screenplay.

The only gag here, as far as I can tell, is Black squeezing himself into a pair of red tights and prancing around like a mental patient. Funny yes, but over the course of an hour and a half, it wears a wee thin.

Nacho Libre strikes a delicate balance of whimsy and absurdity that may surprise auds primed to expect wall-to-wall slapstick.

Nacho Libre, the often hilarious follow-up to Napoleon Dynamite by director Jared Hess, settles it: This is the world's funniest Mormon.

Oddly reverent, faintly patronizing (they shot it in Mexico, with an exceptionally homely cast of extras), and always warm and funny.

The film's sheer lack of everything that customarily passes for comic fuel -- energy, wit, character, fun, a plot -- renders Nacho Libre a torturous patience tester of the first order.

Disappointment, my fellow gringos, presumes positive expectations, so perhaps it is best to report, with some sorrow but no deep surprise, that the new comedy starring Jack Black and directed by Jared Hess, is not illustrious.

Black has the potential to be the rare comedian capable of making lemons into lemonade, but the fruit he's squeezing here is bone-dry.