‘CHACHO, when you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants, in your room. Just for fun.” And sometimes you beat a guy with a bag of tortilla chips, train for a wrestling match by getting melons flung at you or woo a pretty nun by showing off the manly art of making tossed salad.
“Nacho Libre,” the often hilarious follow-up to “Napoleon Dynamite” by director Jared Hess, settles it: This is the world’s funniest Mormon. But this Jack Black comedy about a Mexican friar turned professional wrestler isn’t for everyone. Half of the audience (at least) is going to sit in bewildered silence. The rest will laugh roughly every 8.4 seconds. Hess’ deadpan dorks are strange, really strange. As in the Christopher Guest movies, there is a distinct comedy architecture you recognize from the opening minutes.
Black, using a ridiculous Mexican accent, does the opposite of his usual quick triggered sarcasm. His Friar Ignacio is a clueless naif who serves up dank stews to orphans in a monastery. He is tempted bythe wicked world of pro wrestling, Lucha Libre, a sport in which strong men in colored masks earn eternal glory, or at least “free creams and lotions.” Calling himself Nacho and taking as his tag-team partner a semi-toothless street urchin named Esqueleto, the friar soon finds himself able to afford such treasures as white ankle boots and all the corn on the cob he can eat.
Repeat the following statements in a Mexican accent, and you’ll know what you’re in for: “I was wondering if you would like to join me in my quarters tonight for some toast.” “They don’t think I know a buttload of crap about the Gospel, but I do.” “I am the gatekeeper of destiny, and I will have my glory day in the hot sun.”
Why was I laughing at all of this and much more? What makes these lines destined to be memorized by high school freshmen? It’s that twang of weirdness that never becomes predictable. How many times, for example, have you seen a fat chick at a party pursue a reluctant young hombre by using strategically placed tunnels? The absence of profanity – except for a couple of fart jokes, “Nacho Libre” is clean enough to be shown to church groups – may have a purpose behind it, but it also adds to the atmosphere of irresistible naivety.
Almost the only failure of imagination is in the staging of the bouts, which are no sillier than any episode of Thursday Night Smackdown. And some scenes, such as one in which Nacho fakes his own mugging to impress the nun he adores, don’t pay off. But like “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Nacho Libre” is going to wear out a lot of DVD players.
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NACHO LIBRE
[***] (Three stars)
Vote for Nacho.
Running time: 91 minutes. Rated PG (mild crude humor, mild wrestling violence). At the Empire, the 84th Street, the Kips Bay, others.