“Nacho Libre” another dud from “Napoleon Dynamite” director

Don’t let the inexplicable cult of hype fool you: Jared Hess’ “Napoleon Dynamite” is relentlessly stupid, mean, empty and yes, let it be said, racist.

It constructs a number of representative ciphers (blacks, Hispanics and Napoleon himself) whom we are intended to loathe and laugh at for their stupidity, ineptitude, nerdiness and what have you. Then it attempts to make us feel better in its final minutes with a few unbelievable twists of tone that make us believe that they were the heroes the entire time. I’ve heard it described from several sources as the philosophy of the high school bully, and you’ll get no argument from me.

Hopefully, any thoughts that Hess was the second coming of Wes Anderson will be dashed by his follow-up feature, “Nacho Libre.” It’s easy to see it as another example of “Napoleon Dynamite” and its hate on Hispanics: after all, it features Jack Black in a Speedy Gonzales accent (“you cray-cee”), alongside his similarly funny-talking sidekick (Héctor Jiménez), and funny-talking love interest (Ana de la Reguera). By day, he is a priest/cook at his local orphanage/monastery, but by night, he wrestles on the lucha libre circuit as the masked “Nacho” — and rest assured, if he were not named “Nacho,” he would have certainly been named “Taco” or “Burrito.” But as much as you can rail a film for its racial stereotypes, there comes a point when you realize that such an ignorant mentality is only a minor facet of much greater problems. It may strike everyone at different moments. For me, that point came around when I realized that, yes, every single time that Nacho takes a flying leap, it will be accompanied by a “fart” sound effect.

Such juvenile scatology is the trump card that “Nacho Libre” has to offer—which literally contains nothing that you haven’t seen from countless other such films (bathroom stall antics, and blah blah blah). Perhaps the fact that this ugliness is so much more obvious than the boring banality of “Napoleon Dynamite” will reveal Hess to be a hack. At the same time, however, this stuff continues to proliferate after decades of use, and thus must continue to be written about. In any case, maybe I should be aiming my derision at the target audience that allows such atrocities to continue. “Nacho Libre” will be as funny to you as an unbroken, ten-second shot of a pile of dung, as a recitation of the word “diarrhea.”

But, of course, don’t think that Hess has expanded his vision without abandoning his original aesthetic, which is primarily rooted in “extended scenes of people staring at each other in abject silence.” The director fancies himself some sort of master of the awkward pause, while thoroughly misunderstanding (or just ignoring) the fact that humor-in-awkwardness cannot exist without some modicum of sanity to contrast to it. The entirety of “Nacho Libre” is awkwardness, so there’s no context for it to be funny. Scenes of actual luchador wrestling are somehow only marginally more dynamic, shot with indifference and subsequently viewed in a similar fashion. Wrestling, in itself, is not funny.

The most that I learned from “Nacho Libre” is the fact that the only thing more condescending than telling the hero “you’ll win because you have heart” is pointing to the hero’s (or your own) heart. No, he won’t win because he has heart, he’ll win because underdogs are the Übermenschen of mainstream sports movies, always guaranteed to succeed, specializing and thriving on last-minute, come-from-behind victories.

I wonder why there’s any bother pretending that there will be any other outcome; it’s a tale as old as tales themselves, temporarily put to cinematic rest by “Rocky” but brought right back in “Rocky II.” Honestly, it’s not all that terrible a development. We understand the necessity for some pretense of suspense; the problem is, however, that we can’t keep pretending to be surprised every time it happens. Considering the many things that “Nacho Libre” expects us to ignore in the name of “it’s just supposed to be a funny movie”—like the hackneyed plot, the scatological jokes, the casual racism and the fact that none of it is funny in the least—maybe you should take the idea to the most extreme degree and ignore the whole thing.