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From now on, whenever I eat nachos, I'll think of Jack Black in tights. And that's really disturbing.

Perhaps that was part of the strategy for making the new comedy Nacho Libre an enduring phenomenon. Hey, it worked for director Jared Hess before. Who eats tater tots anymore without quoting Napoleon Dynamite?

In Nacho Libre, Jack Black plays Nacho, a young man raised in a Mexican monastery in Oaxaca, who moves on from his job as a cook to try and save the monastery from financial disaster. His method for raising the funds? He'll compete in the local Lucha Libre tournament, wrestling for prize money. Along the way, he'll try to help the beautiful nun who wins his heart (Ana de la Reguera), and the orphans living at the monastery.

Everyone's asking: Has Hess recaptured the quirkiness and fun that made Napoleon Dynamite such a hit?

According to Christian film critics: Close, but not quite.

"Did you like Napoleon Dynamite? Do you typically like Jack Black?"

Todd Hertz (Christianity Today Movies) begins his Nacho Libre review with those two questions, saying that if you answer "no" to either, well, the movie isn't for you. "But if you appreciate the random quirkiness of Napoleon and the zany, melodramatic and overacted comedy of Black," he says, "welcome to a comedic goldmine. … [T]his goofy comedy is much more like that Idaho-based surprise hit in tone and feel than the commercials let on. And while the irreverent wrestling comedy is laugh-out-loud funny and humorously surprising several times, it could have used more of Napoleon's simple likeability and School of Rock's heart."

Christa Banister (Crosswalk) admits that she was skeptical, but she comes out of the movie cheering. "Nacho Libre is surprisingly clean family entertainment that both kids and adults will enjoy. While the humor is certainly more juvenile than sophisticated in nature, viewers of any age can't help but root for this unlikely hero, stretchy pants and all."

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) calls it an "infantile and dull comedy" that is "utterly lacking in charm, wit or taste. Beyond the pervasive crude humor, the puppy-love relationship of its protagonists, both in religious orders—regardless of whether they've taken 'final vows'—precludes recommendation."

Tom Neven (Plugged In) says the it's "wildly uneven, not sure what kind of movie it wants to be." Comparing it to Napoleon Dynamite, Neven says that with Nacho, moviegoers "won't get a goofy but mostly harmless nerd; they'll get extreme, imitative violence that's all the more problematic because the wrestling moves, performed here by professional stuntmen, give no indication of how truly dangerous they are. Throw in Johnny Knoxville-style stupidity, some gratuitous gross-out gags and gentle but still icky sexual tension between a friar and a nun, and it becomes painfully obvious that this Nacho is no tater tot."

Mainstream critics are not so nuts about Nacho.

The last time Keanu Reeves played a time traveler, it was 1989, his name was Bill, and his partner in trouble-making was a dude named Ted. The last time he got romantic with Sandra Bullock, he was a cop on a bomb-rigged bus.

Now, Reeves is time-traveling and courting Bullock in The Lake House, a remake of a Korean film called Siworae (also known as Il Mare).

The film, directed by Alejandro Agresti, isn't quite up to code, according to Christian press film critics. John Cusack, who was reportedly invited to star in the film, turned it down, and it sounds like that might have been a wise move. The film features supporting work by Christopher Plummer (The New World) and Shoreh Aghdashloo (who will play Elizabeth in The Nativity Story).

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June (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50