Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here to tell you that we have a problem.

We're well into the summer movie season, with at least one major release hitting theatres every week (this week, it's more like three semi-majors). My point is, nothing is shaping up to be as good as I want it to be, and it's not because my expectations are astronomically high.

On paper, this was supposed to be the summer that blew all others away. But nothing that has been released by a major studio so far has really lit a fire under my ass to the point where I want to rally my troops and proclaim, "Go forth, one and all, and spend your hard-earned dollars on this one. See it twice or three times."

While I certainly had good things to say about the latest installments of the Mission: Impossible and X-Men franchises, they haven't leveled me. The latest and perhaps most frustrating and disappointing is Nacho Libre. My heart is officially resting comfortably in a local hospital after being trampled on by star Jack Black and director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite).

I didn't need Nacho Libre to be the most outrageous and hysterical film of the year. I suspected that despite what the studio promotions department would have you believe that director Hess would never make a film that was a simple comedy. I saw his last film many weeks before it opened and immediately wrote about it; I think I may have been a founding member of the "Napoleon Dynamite is the greatest thing since sliced bread" club. Debate it all you want, but for the better part of 2004, that film ruled the minds of many a film geek.

Nacho Libre offers the same gentle soul of Napoleon, but now it feels like the mold has been reused. Setting this film in Mexico, making Jack Black a monk with a passion for Mexican wrestling, casting himself as the greatest luchadore in the nation, does not make the films all that different. Both are PG rated and have a child-like innocence to them that is both endearing and frustrating.

As much as I like Napoleon Dynamite, I think Jack Black is something just shy of a god. But there's too much of familiar Jack Black routine here: the weird scrunched-up devil face, the contorted eyebrow dance, and the scat singing that makes his Tenacious D performances so perfect are totally out of place here. Yes, Black gets a chance to sing a couple songs in Nacho Libre, and it completely took me out of the film.

Nacho the monk works at a dingy orphanage, where he cooks and serves warmed-over gruel to this poor, dirty orphans. He warns them that watching wrestling is against god. "Thou shalt not wrestle thy neighbor" he reminds them, while secretly plotting his entry into the arena, where the masked wrestlers are some of Mexico's biggest stars.

He recruits as his tag-team partner, the spindly street urchin Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez), whose deadpan delivery and blank expression (occasionally punctuated by the toothiest grin since Jaws) is the most like the characters in Napoleon Dynamite. That's probably why I liked what he does in this film more than anything else about it. The pair don't fare so well in the ring, but they show promise and the popularity among wrestling fans begins to grow.

Nacho has a not-so-secret crush on the newest employee at his monastery, the drop-dead gorgeous nun played by celebrated Mexican actress Ana de la Reguera. Their harmless flirtation borders on charming, but I just couldn't get interested in those scenes because Hess seems determined to race us through them just as they were getting in the way of the comedy.

It's tough to believe that Mike White (whose winning script for School of Rock managed to make a kids movie equally interesting for adults) had a hand in this work, which relies way too much on poop and fart jokes, and never misses a chance to highlight Black's bulging belly or ass straining the molecular fabric of his wrestling tights.

There are momentary flashes of very funny stuff, but I think I laughed out loud on average about once every 15-20 minutes, not good considering the film barely cracks 90 minutes. I'll give Hess and White credit: I don't think they're going for big laughs all that often, but what we're left with isn't particularly interesting.

At its core, Nacho Libre is about chasing a dream, even if it means leaving behind the life you've been living since you were a child and perhaps even losing the one person who loves you for what you are.

Right now, the dream I'm chasing is a truly great summer release, because Nacho Libre was a massive let down for me. By the time you read this, I'll have seen Superman Returns and A Scanner Darkly, probably the two films I've most been looking forward to this summer. I'm not allowed to talk about those two movies just yet, but if you talk to me over the weekend and I'm in a foul mood, consider that my early review.

Capone