Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

34 10,000 B.C.
48 21
47 27 Dresses
17 88 Minutes
39 Alvin and the Chipmunks
55 Baby Mama
69 Bank Job, The
52 Be Kind Rewind
42 Bucket List, The
54 Charlie Bartlett
36 College Road Trip
31 Deception
51 Doomsday
41 Drillbit Taylor
29 Fool's Gold
57 Forbidden Kingdom, The
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
59 Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour
56 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
71 Horton Hears a Who!
63 How She Move
78 Iron Man
35 Jumper
81 Juno
56 Leatherheads
41 Mad Money
37 Made of Honor
9 Meet the Spartans
48 National Treasure: Book of Secrets
39 Never Back Down
55 Nim's Island
50 Other Boleyn Girl, The
xx Rogue
44 Ruins, The
47 Semi-Pro
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
57 Smart People
36 Speed Racer
62 Spiderwick Chronicles, The
50 Step Up 2 the Streets
61 Stop Loss
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
92 There Will Be Blood
45 Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
40 Vantage Point
36 What Happens in Vegas...

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83 Alexandra
43 Anamorph
35 Babysitters, The
32 Backseat
80 Band's Visit, The
62 Battle for Haditha
47 Bella
63 Blind Mountain
71 Blindsight
47 Boarding Gate
63 Body of War
58 Bra Boys
70 Caramel
54 Cashback
44 Chaos Theory
32 Chapter 27
69 Chicago 10
82 Chop Shop
46 CJ7
78 Counterfeiters, The
30 Cover
48 Dark Matter
35 Deal
61 Dhamma Brothers, The
92 Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58 Fall, The
43 Favor, The
58 First Saturday in May, The
57 Flawless
87 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx From Within
44 Frontier(s)
59 Fugitive Pieces
41 Funny Games
66 George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61 Girls Rock!
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57 Grand, The
58 Hats Off
68 Honeydripper
xx Jack and Jill vs. the World
67 Jellyfish
xx Kiss the Bride
37 Life Before Her Eyes, The
72 Life of Reilly, The
50 Look
65 Married Life
35 Meet Bill
63 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
54 Mister Lonely
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
49 Noise
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
55 Pathology
48 Penelope
90 Persepolis
62 Planet B-Boy
xx Plumm Summer, A
67 Praying with Lior
44 Previous Engagement, A
72 Priceless
17 Prom Night
69 Redbelt
72 Roman de gare
48 Run, Fat Boy, Run
85 Savages, The
24 Sex and Death 101
66 Shelter
75 Shotgun Stories
40 Sleepwalking
67 Snow Angels
64 Son of Rambow
71 Standard Operating Procedure
76 Stuff and Dough
64 Surfwise
xx Tashan
82 Taxi to the Dark Side
57 Teeth
56 Then She Found Me
55 Tracey Fragments, The
56 Turn the River
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
59 Under the Same Moon
76 Unforeseen, The
xx Unsettled
91 Up the Yangtze
55 Vice
79 Visitor, The
64 Water Lilies
45 Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57 Without the King
74 Witnesses, The
63 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Nacho Libre
Paramount Pictures


6.5

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 112 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

Napoleon Dynamite

MPAA RATING: PG for some rough action, and crude humor including dialogue

Starring Jack Black, Ana de la Reguera, H�ctor Jim�nez, and Richard Montoya

Jack Black stars as Ignacio (friends call him Nacho), a cook by day in a Mexican orphanage, who moonlights as a lucha libre wrestler to raise money for the orphans in this comedy from the creators of "Napoleon Dynamite" and the writer of "The School of Rock." (Paramount)

GENRE(S):	Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Jared Hess Jerusha Hess Mike White
DIRECTED BY:	Jared Hess
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 24, 2006 Theatrical: June 16, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Endearingly ridiculous.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

What's rare to see, and what ultimately makes Nacho Libre so enjoyable, is the story of an underdog who's allowed to remain a humble clown all the way to becoming a hero.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Black's caped "luchador" grows on you. Like a fun guy.

USA Today Claudia Puig

What is missing in plot and character development is made up for in silly fun.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Hess' deadpan dorks are strange, really strange. As in the Christopher Guest movies, there is a distinct comedy architecture you recognize from the opening minutes.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The movie is semi-infantile camp but often riotous.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

An amiably clunky, unapologetically silly summer confection that nevertheless lands sufficient lethal slams to the funny bone.

Variety Joe Leydon

Nacho Libre strikes a delicate balance of whimsy and absurdity that may surprise auds primed to expect wall-to-wall slapstick.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

You either come into Nacho Libre ready to surrender yourself to Hess' quirks and smirks or you don't. Middle ground is virtually impossible to imagine.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie is a bauble, but it's an enjoyably weird and original one, and it is anchored by Black's constantly amusing performance.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The film is easy to take and easy to forget, even with Black running around Oaxaca in turquoise wrestling tights.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The sweetness of Nacho's nature, along with Black's unselfconscious physical enthusiasm, turn all this into a live-action cartoon, with the ring violence having no greater consequence than a Wile E. Coyote fall from a high place.

Empire Ian Nathan

A daft idea perfectly calibrated to Black?s pop mania, then hermetically sealed by a director who thinks he?s making a Hal Hartley movie.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's weird, clean, good-natured fun, and it's far too subdued for its madcap milieu.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Nacho Libre enhances Hess' reputation as a gifted filmmaker and suggests there's more to Black than manic dementia. Both director and actor, however, need to find projects better-suited to their respective (and often impressive) talents.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Very broad and very silly, it's a doodle of a comedy -- a one-joke idea (fat guy goes luchador) padded out to feature length by Black's willingness to do anything for a laugh.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

As with "Napoleon Dynamite," Hess' sense of humor is an acquired taste, where all the characters speak in peculiar cadences and are afflicted with a terminal case of the "quirkies." What?s unfortunately missing from Nacho Libre is much in the way of humor.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Mike White contributed to the script, and though he shares with the Hesses an innocence that can be both sweet and slightly grotesque (e.g., Chuck and Buck), his influence is most evident here in the conventional plotting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The comedy is hit and miss, with good bits interrupted by dead patches. It's a movie to root for more than to enjoy.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a comedy at cross-purposes -- by turns low-key, bombastic, mildly amusing, manically slapstick. At least there are the fart jokes as a connecting thread.

The New Yorker David Denby

There are many scenes of mock-lucha wrestling, which become as boring as actual wrestling. Nacho Libre, na�vely made kids? stuff, lacks such minor attributes as a decent script and supporting cast.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This Nacho leaves your palate longing for more spice and less rancid cheese.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Infinitely more entertaining than anything the WWE has done recently, this sophomore outing from "Napoleon Dynamite" director Hess is full of cheesy goodness, but it's Velveeta.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

Nacho Libre plays like a Jack Black best-of, down to the song he wrote and performs for de La Reguera that sounds like some Tejano version of a Tenacious D throwaway.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Like the abominable "Napoleon Dynamite," director Jared Hess' second feature will doubtless capture the hearts and minds of 12-year-old boys everywhere, even if Nacho Libre sacrifices the earlier film's aggressive mean-spiritedness in favor of gentle slapstick lunacy.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

When he runs out of material to tickle with, Black dips into his musically tenacious "deedle-diddle-dee" for some sure-fire ridiculousness.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

By making Nacho a do-gooder, Hess defuses Black's subversive energy. You could argue that Black also played a do-gooder in "School of Rock," but the kids in that film were a lot spunkier, and Black wasn't constantly playing for sympathy as he does here.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Is it funny? Now and then. Stupid? Very. Racist? Possibly. Ugly? Profoundly. Wild? Undeniably. Singular? Completely.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

How can any comedy with Jack Black as a Mexican wrestler not be gut-bustingly hilarious? Nacho Libre provides an all-too-convincing answer.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Once Nacho gets the wrestling bug, though, it's all about Jack Black the irrepressible clown, and the comedy dies a slow death for lack of fresh ideas.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Too much in Nacho Libre doesn't work to enable me to recommend it to anyone except a card-carrying member of the Jack Black fan club.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The two stars of Nacho Libre, Jack Black and Jack Black's hair, take different paths.

Slate Dana Stevens

Sputters to an ignominious halt in the first 20 minutes.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It takes some doing to make a Jack Black comedy that doesn't work. But Nacho Libre does it.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a one-gag film that rises or falls on how funny you find the sight of fat, grease-slicked Jack Black crammed into spandex pants and capering like an epileptic lamb.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

You can see what the film was going for, but the jokes just sit there; you chuckle a few times, mostly out of lame hope, but you never bust a gut, never really get what you came for.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 112 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Adam L. gave it an8:
Ku B., if this is honestly one of the worst movies you've seen in your life, my suggestion to you is to go see more movies.

Kim w. gave it a10:
The funniest thing about this movie was reading the ratings here. It goes a 10, a 0, a 9, a 1etc... and the comments by those who missed the great humor, is the most hilarious of all. The genius of this movie is its perception by some and imperception by others. Black was the funniest ever.

Jack B. gave it a9:
One of the funniest movies I've ever seen! Jack Black did such an awesome job.

Louis's brother gave it a4:
I really like Jack Black, but this movie really robbed him of his character. The biggest problem was that the whole movie was too quiet and inactive. No offense to Paramount or the writers of Napolean dynamite, but his movie would be a lot better if anybody else wrote it.

George F. gave it a9:
Not quite as good as Napoleon Dynamite, but just as underrated by the critics. There are two movies here: a weird, subtle successor of Napoleon Dynamite, and and over-the-top Jack Black comedy that embraces its imperfections. These prop each other up like a couple of Hessian nerds, and make for a disjointed but fun movie.

Andy S. gave it a5:
Some funny parts but an overall disappointment.

Hal B. gave it a4:
See Roger Ebert's review... he got it correct. I am a Jack Black fan and was terribly disappointed. Some interesting & funny scenes, to be sure, but they are very few and far between. School of Rock was so much better. Ah well... even good comedic actors make bad films from time to time. Comedy, I think, is so much harder to pull off and sustain than drama. I mean, JackAss 2 was a much better film, in terms of out and out humor (as gross and infantile as it is).

Nacho Libre Paramount Pictures

Nacho Libre
Paramount Pictures