Nacho Libre (Review)

Back from a week of vacations and I still fill a bit relaxed, so because of that I'm in the mood to do a review of a cult classic movie from the lucha libre genre, Nacho Libre... wait what?

Lets get the obvious out of the way, Jared Hess takes some liberties for making this film and exaggerates and ignores some details of lucha libre. These also applies  for the main character, I've read some comments from people that are bitter about Nacho not looking Mexican enough. But hey, Hess offers a good explanation for this, Nacho's mother was Scandinavian, I'm guessing their skin tone is quite white.

These details would pissed a hardcore lucha fan, I must say that I was a bit angry at the time. But after watching it a couple times more, it kind of grow on me and became one of my favorite movies, but still I considered it to be one of my guilty pleasures.

Returning to the flick, if you're not familiar with its story, it goes something like this. Nacho is the son of a Scandinavian missionary and a Mexican deacon (What could be the odds for this encounter to happen?) who becomes orphan and is interned into a monastery / seminar / orphanage, where he becomes the cook.

Nacho starts caring for the children of the orphanage and he feels bad every time he can't give them something decent and better to eat. His solution to improve the diet of these orphan kids? Put on a lucha libre mask and become a luchador, yeah, because is that "easy".

I'm stopping on how the story develops right here. But I'm not done yet. What makes the movie enjoyable?

Visually is very attractive, the photography is great. The composition of most of the shots, the colors and tones are just gorgeous.

Although is vaguely based on Fray Tormenta's career, it manages to keep some key elements of his story: a priest that becomes a luchador to help orphan kids.

El Esqueleto simply it was a funny character.

Being based on lucha libre, it was rather obligated that this movie had mexican talent related to the sport fortunately it did, Cesar Gonzáles better known as Silver King played the role of Ramses, Armando "Mucha Crema" Gaytan played himself as one of the ring announcers. 

A really entertaining movie that you should watch. This is all for today, I'll see you next week.

Francisco Arreola

@fcoarreola