Nacho Libre, is a laugh riot from the beginning to the end. It is a clean family entertainer where I could sit with my son and laugh alongside him without cringing in embarrassment at anything that was being shown. A time when the movie business is replete with remakes, sequels and comic book adaptations this one is a fresh, small budget, no special effect movie that can make adults crack up like some freckled faced teenager.

Nacho Libre is another sweet comedy cooked up by the writers Mike White, Jerusha Hess and Jard Hess, who happen to direct the movie as well. Jack Black is the central character playing Nacho a half Mexican half American Friar, who yearns to be in another band of brotherhood much different from the Church he works in.

Orphaned at an early, Ignacio was raised in a Monastery; he is the meal man who cooks, here may I add, atrocious food for the orphans. Infact the meals cooked by him are so bad that orphans would rather have less food than eat the unpalatable food he cooks. To add insult to his injury the men of cloth don’t think much of him either and treats him pretty bad. The only thing going for him is that he adores the orphans and his yearning to become a ‘luchador’ or wrestler. Well, on the side, he is also attracted to the distractingly beautiful Sister Encarnacio. One can’t blame him for that, because celibate or not one is bound to look at least twice at such a pretty creation of God. Nacho stuck in the daily humdrum routine wants to catch her eye and also longs for the kind of attention the great luchador Ramses gets.

Collaborating with the street thief, Esquelto, into becoming his sidekick, he starts off his career as the masked wrestler. He soon figures out that he is as bad in wrestling as he is in cooking up the daily broth but luckily for him, he didn’t have to win to be paid. By night Ignacio is an infamously unsuccessful masked wrestler and by day he is the friar with a crush on the new entrant nun at the monastery.

Ignacio is in constant dilemma, because he is not happy just serving god, he wants to do something more. I think where the film scores is the fact it never mocks at religion. Yes the new nun is gorgeous and the priests have the hots for her but then who wouldn’t? In the end it is a movie not so much about religion but about faith. Its Ignacio’s faith that stops him from being enraged at the other priests who constantly humiliate him, it is his faith and belief that he can do something more for the orphans that propels him to go on a limb and become a, though ludicrous, but a wrestler nevertheless.

Nacho Libre is far from being a path breaking film, but lets confront facts, what can be expected of a wrestling comedy from a moustached butterball Priest. Its laughable when detractors think it hurts people’s sensibilities, for whatever its worth, comedies are not supposed to tread the territory of the politically right. So leave that garb behind and watch this simple and hilarious underdog comedy. Nacho Libre is at once funny, sweet and surprising.

I leave you with a few scenes of Nacho Libre