Eagle vs. Shark…the review! (******6/10)
One of the weirdest movies in a long time is coming out on Tuesday. Alliance Atlantis is releasing the New Zealand movie Eagle vs. Shark, which at first I thought was a movie trying to piggy-back on the success of Napoleon Dynamite. You know, some high-school weirdo who doesn’t make any sense and is gloriously nerdy and weird somehow makes us smile while failing at everything. When Eagle vs. Shark began, I thought the basic premise was going to be Napoleon Dynamite grown-up. The main characters are mid-thirties Napoleon Dynamites who have never managed to get over that awkward, geeky, socially maladjusted stage in which Jon Heder found himself in that “classic” film. My initial reaction was geez, I’ve MET people like this. I KNOW these people. But then a little while later, I realized two things. Number one, I do NOT know these people. And that’s not because they don’t exist, but rather because I would never meet them. These are the kind of people who meet only each other in life. Also, this is not a Napoleon Dynamite rip-off. These characters stand on their own and are unique.
Lily is a cashier at a fast food restaurant, and she is not friends with any of her co-workers, who all look at her as though she is some kind of freak. And, in a way, she is. She is definitely the kind of oddball who would find it hard to make friends at work, since she would have just about nothing in common with anybody else. The one person with whom she does have some things in common is Jarrod, a frequent customer at her restaurant. Lily has the hots for Jarrod, who has the hots for one of Lily’s co-workers. This is in itself fairly indicative of Jarrod’s level of social awkwardness as well. Any person in their mid-thirties who has the hots for a fast-food employee is one of two things. Deluded, since they think because the girl’s job sucks, she must be as big a loser as he is and they would be a great match. Or two, a creepy stalker, because the reason that girl has such a crappy job is that she is sixteen.
Of course, Lily and Jarrod hook up, in one of the most awkward but sweet scenes in movies. This quickly becomes a relationship, of sorts. Jarrod is still that high school loser, making up stories and obviously lying about himself and his family so he’ll seem cooler. Lily, on the other hand, is just a weirdo, so starved for affection and social contact that she will believe just about anything Jarrod (or anyone else) says to her. They bond over a video game (big surprise) which leads to more bonding, which very quickly leads to a trip to Jarrod’s home town, where Lily gets to meet his family. The reason for Jarrod’s visit to his home town, however, is not to see his family, but rather to take revenge against the high school bully who used to torment him. You see, Jarrod believes that now that he is an adult, he is finally cool, and finally a real man, and can now beat up this guy who used to pick on him. Of course he is wrong. He is not cool.
I won’t give away the rest of the film, since I think it is worth watching, but I will say this. Jarrod’s family is irritating. When you have a weirdo like Jarrod carrying the picture, and Lily is as strange as he is, the people around them shouldn’t be equally strange. If he had a regular, normal family, then his strangeness would be accentuated. Instead, the scenes in his home town feel like a giant assault of weird on us, the viewers. There is just too much strange to handle all at once. Remember the second Ace Ventura movie? And how the African people were just as weird as Jim Carrey? Remember how that really sucked? Well, it doesn’t suck as much here, but it becomes obnoxious pretty fast.
I do recommend Eagle vs. Shark, because as far as romantic comedies go, it is not that romantic and not that comedic. It’s a movie that exists in it’s own little world, and that world is a charming and pleasant, if excessively weird, one. It is not a movie that could have held my attention for two hours, but at a tight one hour and 28 minutes, it is just long enough. It ends just before it gets too obnoxious to continue. Well done!