What's the disadvantage to being "overkill" that this remedies? nginx is very easy to install, and a static web server configuration is pretty much the default one. Is this faster? Does it use less memory?
It also freaks out if the root dir is blown away, which can be quite common if you're trying to use it with a static site generator.
'python -m SimpleHTTPServer' is great for serving files to yourself but that's about it.