100 Movie Project - Nacho Libre

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The following post contains spoilers for Nacho Libre, The Mitchells vs the Machines, and Here Comes the Boom.

Alright this is hardly an example of high class cinema but sometimes I need to watch a movie for myself too. I think I actually saw this movie in theaters years ago but I can’t say I remembered much so decided to give it a watch again for fun. And I like Jack Black.

Jack Black plays a brother who grew up in a Mexican orphanage before becoming the cook there when he got older. He cares about the orphans but overall doesn’t love the work. The orphanage doesn’t have he money for him to get real ingredients to cook with, he isn’t respected by the other brothers, and he falls in love with a sister who comes to work at the orphanage. The story then follows him as he secretly becomes a wrestler to make more money so he can procure better ingredients to cook with while struggling with his dual identity.

Honestly there’s nothing particularly special about the movie. Like I said it’s hardly a cinema classic. But there’s a certain charm to Jack Black that I’ve always enjoyed. His performances are filled with this sort of chaotic energy that I find makes the movies fun. Personally I like this. It’s something I used a lot when I was a teacher to keep the students focused on the class and something I’d like to make better use of in the short films I do with my friends, although we’d have to write something that lent itself to that kind of performance.

I also found Jack Black’s character Ignacio somewhat relatable as he chased his dream. Although he was a cook in an orphanage he had aspirations of being a wrestler. He never chased that dream because wrestling was forbidden by the orphanage and, I assume, a belief that he just couldn’t do it, a lack of time, and who knows what else. As I’ve said in other posts this is something I understand and something I think a lot of other people understand as well. I don’t want to be chained to a desk all day typing away at a computer but that’s what society deems appropriate. That’s what I’m supposed to do. I want to act and make movies and take photos of birds but the odds of any of that happening beyond what I do with my friends is infinitesimally small. I realize that. But does that mean I shouldn’t try? That I should just throw up my hands in defeat and lock my desk chain myself? And even if I don’t give up between working full time and necessary adult things like doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, and exercising how am I supposed to really dedicate any time to the things I want to do? And I don’t even have kids who would whittle down my little free time even more.

That’s why I like movies like Nacho Libre and The Mitchells vs the Machines, which I wrote about last week. Their protagonists chase their dreams. They do what I and many others wish we could do. They break free. Ignacio moonlights as a wrestler before finally becoming a professional and Katie spends her childhood making home movies before eventually getting accepted into film school. Movies like this make you believe that one day maybe you too can break free of whatever you believe is holding you back. Now that may be unrealistic and maybe if it did happen you’d even realize that it isn’t as great as you hoped it would be. A sort of “Your hobby stops being fun when it becomes your career” sort of thing. It’s also an easy criticism to make of these sorts of movies. An overweight cook at an orphanage could never become a lucha libre wrestler, not even an amateur one who exists to lose (although it’s way more likely than what happens in Kevin James’ MMA film Here Comes the Boom, which I enjoyed for the same reason). But who cares?

Movies are escapism. They’re supposed to be fun, or scary, or exciting, or anything else that doesn’t happen in real life. They’re supposed to pull you out of the real world and deposit you into their world for a little while. That’s why I always feel bad for the people that can’t enjoy many movies because they’re overly critical of them. Don’t get me wrong. Some movies are bad and you can’t enjoy them. But just because a movie isn’t good (something critically acclaimed like Taxi Driver or Blade Runner, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily bad. Go see a movie, turn off your brain for a bit, and just enjoy it.

Nacho Libre is not an example of high class cinema, but it is a mindless 2 hours of watching Jack Black act as an over-the-top lucha libre wrestler and there’s no reason we can’t watch someone chase their dreams, impossible though it may be.

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