Nacho' Blog: New Office, Nacho Libre Review, and MORE

So here I am in my brand spankin' new office.

And as I peruse one of my new favorite blogs, thecompanybitch.blogspot.com, I wonder what is going on. Here I am, coming to work wearing khaki pants and a button down shirt, sitting in an office staring at a computer, "managing" things for a large corporation, doing such tasks as making Excel charts, cc'ing people on emails, and trying to figure out the best position for my computer monitor.

Nevertheless, I can't complain too much right now. In a way this could be just the interim position I need to be in before I take some as of yet unknown next step into the Hollywood wilderness. I'm not really doing typical assistant tasks, like rolling calls or anything like that, which is great, as I really can't say I'm a fan of, or particularly skilled at, handling high volumes of phone traffic, especially when the people on the other end are the typical, you know, showbiz types.

This office really is kinda funny though. It's an odd mix of buttoned-up new media people (weird as I think of new media people in the silicon-valley, let's-have-fun with Google! in our funky new-agey office-spaces stereotype), along with the crew from Bravo. 'Nuff said. Not that there's anything wrong with that ...

Anyways, it is what it is. It's too early to really comment, I guess. Today is already much better than yesterday, where I had to arrive at Universal at 8 am to give the movers the go-ahead to move my stuff to Pinnacle. I was totally wiped out from Sunday's NBC Page Bonfire. Even if I hadn't had to wake up so early, I would have been out of it. The early start time combined with the usual weariness that comes with starting in new surroundings made yesterday the longest day ever. I could not wait to bolt out of work and rush home to collapse on my bed and seize all physical / mental function.

On one random note ... I saw JOAN RIVERS, followed by a small crew of assistants, entering the Pinnacle building yesterday, on my first day at work there. OH! OH! Haha, very odd. By all acouunts - the way she walked, moved, her posture - she was every bit the 70-something elderly Jewish woman she actually is. Just one who happens to have a freakishly smooth face. Presumably she was there to meet with Bravo or something, but who knows.

But getting away from all this work crap ...

- Sad, I know -- I LOST THE GREAT NACHO LIBRE BET WITH ABBY.

What does this mean for YOU?!?! Well, it means that, as an added stipulation to our wager, ou will soon see a special edition of the blog that is written by special-guest contributor Abby! I know, I know, it should be interesting ...

But, about Nacho:

Nacho still took in a nifty 27 million or so, but I admit that 40 mil was a bit of a bold prediction on my part. With something that attracts a cult audience, it's really hard to tell just how big that audience actually is, because all the internet chatter, t-shirt sales, etc can at times lead one to overestimate something's actual fanbase. I think Nacho probably did perform VERY well in its targeted demo of kids and teens. It's problem was that unlike, say, the Wedding Crashers, most people over 35 probably have no clue why Jack Black in a lucha libre mask is supposed to be funny. Napoleon Dynamite launched with little fanfare and soon became a cult, near-mainstream hit. Nacho had all the expectations of a post-Napoleon landscape riding on its shoulders, and the starpower of Jack Black to boot, so it definitely carried with it a lot of hype. The funny thing is that critics and even audiences seemed surprised to find not a "Jack Black movie" (whatever that is) but a Jared Hess movie -- quirky and simplistic, anything but conventional, and unique in its deadpan style of humor.

So yes, I lost the bet, but I think that Nacho is a great second effort from Hess that will have pretty good legs at the box office and do great on DVD as well.

And now, on to the REVIEW ...

But first off, a word on critics.

Every critic has moments where they win or lose you. Of course, you can't agree with a particular critic 100 % of the time, but sometimes a critic's particular review is either so in line with your own sensibilities, or so out of whack, that you look at them in a whole new light. For years growing up, I would read the Hartford Courant's movie reviews and HATE what I saw. The hack critic at the Courant, I believe he was named Malcolm Johnson, was TERRIBLE. He basically hated everything unless it was a classic, Oscar-baiting white-collar piece of cinema. He gave all action, sci-fi, horror, and kids movies bad reviews. Of course, he didn't like most comedies either. And his reviews spent three quarters of the allotted space detailing the movie's plot, even if it was, say, Judge Dread. He never placed movies within the context of their genre, and never really explained why he did or didn't like a movie except in brief sentances praising the acting or direction. So yeah, Malcolm whatever-his-name-was lost me at a very young age.

But then I discovered Gene Siskel. Yes, of Siskel and Ebert. Siskel gave a little known movie that I loved called Dark City a great review - one of the only critics to do so at its release. At that moment, I was a Siskel fan.

Ain't It Cool News had my loyalty from the moment I discovered where it was coming from. A bunch of geeks who got so mad with the atrocities that Joel Schumaker committed to the Batman franchise that they vowed to scrutinize all genre films to the Nth degree.

Anyways, I have always been an Owen Glieberman fan from EW. He seems to be a real "pop culture" reviewer, recognizing when something is cool, new, different, or just plain exciting in terms of filmmaking. He is one of my go-to reviewers for mainstream drama, action, or scifi movies because his assessments are usually fair and well-explained. But now, I think Owen has lost me. Just as I don't know if I can look at Roger Ebert quite the same way after his recent, totally insane, in-character-as-Garfield review of Garfield 2, I don't know if I can trust Glieberman on comedies anymore.

His review of Nacho Libre was just terrible. He gave the movie a D+. What?!?! On what grading scale is Nacho Libre a D+ ? And his reasons for disliking it were completely inane. He compared it to movies like Tommy Boy that he disliked but then went on to appreciate once he caught them on late-night cable. Except he predicted that even repeated late night cable viewings of Nacho would not change his opinion. Owen came at his review from the completely wrong angle, and it leads me to believe that his comedic sensibilities are just not very good.

Just one more elaboration on why you can rarely trust critics when it comes to certain types of comedies.

- Now, SUPERMAN RETURNS ... it's getting stellar reviews from numerous sources, which in a way is getting me more excited to see it. BUT. Here's the thing with superhero movies. Most mainstream critics want their superhero movies to be as un-superhero-y as possible. They don't care about the source material, or the expectations of the fanbase (action! actual superheroics! a great villain! kickass-ness!). Still, recent superhero movies like X-Men, Spiderman, and Batman Begins, have been able to please both fans and mainstream critics by working as mainstream films AND being true to their source material. It's been a while since there's been a GOOD superhero movie that was a GOOD MOVIE but NOT in line with fan expectations. The Hulk might be an example. Or Tim Burton's Batman. Or yes, Richard Donner's SUPERMAN films.

So that's what Superman Returns is shaping up to be -- a good, maybe great movie in and of itself, that still, is not even close to what I want a Superman movie to be.

Right, back to Nacho ....

NACHO LIBRE Review:

I honestly thought that Nacho was a great comedy. Was it perfect? No. Was it the same blast of new-style comedy that Napoleon Dynamite was in the summer of 2004? Nope. But was it a funny, heart-filled, enjoyable comedy from start to finish? Hells yes.

I love this style of comedy. It's light-hearted, kid-appropriate, and innocent without losing its bite. Some have called Jared Hess' pension for oddball characters condescending, but I don't think that's the case at all. I think Hess' affection for his characters always shines through. And as one review I read puts it, what Hess does, in a way, is that he creates offbeat, slightly surreal worlds for his characters to inhabit that are probably not too far off from how the characters themselves see things through their eyes. In Napoleon Dynamite, the entire movie takes on the cartoony nature of one of Napoleon's quirky notebook doodles. In Nacho Libre, the entire movie, similarly, feels like a storybook that Nacho himself may have cobbled together for the orphans that he looks after. And I don't think that's condescending, just having a unique, funny, quirky vision for your movie's universe and characters.

Like Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho is filled with lines that are funny just because of how they are said. Jack Black's eyebrow-raising as he tells his nun friend about "lucha libre." His mopey angst at having no good "duties." You want to repeat every line after it is said just because the actors are having so much fun with what they are saying.

"I believe in Science."

"It is true ... I am Nacho."

"I was in ... the wilderness."

Just the way that Hess, writer Mike White, and the actors have so much fun playing around with words and ways of speaking is great. It makes dialogue that looks flimsy on paper instantly quotable, and every line infinitely memorable. The simplicity with which Hess and co create comedy is really pretty amazing.

Now so many critics say Napoleon Dynamite had no heart, which I don't see at all. I think that movie is full of heart, in its own way. But Nacho wears its heart on its sleeve. This movie is all heart, but not in a way that is disagreeable. It's all heart in the manner of Doug, or Pete and Pete, or the other classic Nickelodeon shows (this is a Nickelodeon film, after all), where its quirkiness and simplistic, kid-friendly charm wins you over and you begin to unapologetically root for the hero as if you've never seen another underdog-does-good movie before.

Jack Black is very funny as Nacho - his bombastic, flashy ring persona is constantly pushing to escape his subdued, restrained humble orphanage cook persona. Like all of us, he dreams of a better life of fame and fortune, not by being a movie star, but as a luchador - a participant in the high-flying, free-form style of Mexican wrestling known as Lucha Libre.

I love the absurdity of Lucha Libre. In Mexico, there is a real air of legitimacy around wrestling in that it's stars are treated as real-life superheroes, and the identities of masked wrestlers are kept completely secret. Losing one's mask is considered as being shamed, and so masked luchadors never remove heir masks when in public. Nacho plays up the absurdities of lucha libre, but revels in its fun. Obviously, Jared Hess has a real passion for the strange world of lucha libre, and that passion comes through throughout the movie. Like with Napoleon, he is pointing out the inherent absurdities of this world, but in a way that is so filled with passion so as to negate any perceived meanness.

Again, this movie was not perfect. The build-up to Nacho's climactic wrestling match was pretty short, and his archrival Ramses was not given much personality except as Stock Badguy #1. Some of the scenes fell a little flat, but that's to be expected in a movie where practically every word or twitch of Jack Black's eyebrow is a potential punchline. Also, Nacho's lust for his long-lashed nun friend seemed almost tragic -- we are happy for their friendship but the lack of possibility for romance is kind of an odd way to setup these two characters. I guess it's the mormon version of a romantic subplot ...?

Anyways, I had a ton of fun with this movie, and look forward to seeing it again and reliving all the funny lines and moments. I hope that more of these comedies come down the pipeline, as they are a great alternative to the latest Obnoxious Guy-Woos-Woman-And-Wins-Us-Over frat pack comedy. I'm happy that kids have movies like these to enjoy, that inspire and excite without the usual endless stream of PG-13 sex jokes.

D+? No way. Gliberman, come out of your cynical cave of poor comedic taste and embrace your inner luchador. I know I have.

My Grade: A -

OTHER STUFF:

- This past weekend was good times all around. KC, Whitney, and Megan's party on Saturday was most excellent, and the 2nd Annual NBC Page Bonfire (my first as a former page) was great times, even if the traffic to and from Dockweiller Beach near LAX was horrendous. Still, it was great to see all the old-school NBC peeps this weekend, as well as to meet the new class of NBC Pages (by new class I mean anyone who started after I finished). Footballs were thrown, sandwiches were eaten, stories told 'round the bonfire, and good times for all. Have I mentioned it was good times?

- NBA FINALS tonight .... daaaaaaaaamn. It's on now.

- Long entry, I know. I've got more to say but no more time to say it. Peace out for now.

NACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo ..........