Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I caught this at Sundance (read the review here!) and loved it. Sure, I have an unhealthy love of all things New Zealand, but I've seen shitty NZ films before. The comedy in this one reaches past the two islands in the southern hemisphere. Great, quirky little movie this is. And I'm not alone in thinking so. Here's a review from a recent college screening of the film! Enjoy!!!

Magic Lantern Films, in cooperation with UCSB, put on a free showing of the new comedy-romance from New Zealand, Eagle vs Shark. In short, this is a film worth paying full admission for; the Napoleon Dynamite comparisons are inevitable, but ultimately superficial, because unlike that film, Eagle vs Shark actually has respect for its characters and setting, and is something different than a straight-out lampoon.

Eagle vs Shark (2007)
dir. Taika Cohen

High school is a traumatic place, all things considered, for many sorts of people, every archetype and everywhere in-between. And adolescence is, appropriately, a traumatic time, enough to where if you add traumatic events to the whole thing, the damage is deep; the difficulties stretch past adolescence and into adulthood, and life itself becomes an awkward discontinuity, full of disruptive absurdities. Taika Cohen, credited as writer and director of Eagle vs Shark, delivers an effort colored by recognizing the humor in its post-high school, twenty-something subjects, as well as the respect that they demand.

The film's central protagonist, our "Shark," is a quiet, pretty girl named Lily, played by the beautiful Loren Horsley, who is also slightly socially inept. She has difficulty dealing with her coworkers at the local mall's primary fast food joint, Meaty Boy. We are introduced to her via the reflection of a mirror, privy to the nuances of her facial expressions, freckled cheeks and blushing smile, and it's only to her reflection that Lily can act out her fantasies of being asked out, of receiving declarations of love.

But the main point is that there really isn't anything wrong with her. Sure, she's not great at playing the guitar, but she's honest about it. And she really is very pretty, although she certainly looks better in normal clothes than in her Meaty Boy uniform. When life begins to exert its cruel force on her through a series of events, her brother, Damon, is there for her, in his own endearingly goofy way. He draws a picture for her, which looks like a picture that could have been drawn by a not-particularly-talented five-year-old. He plays silly car games, like counting horses, and likes to recite quotes from movies in terrible accents. This is the kind of support system that we could all use, I think, and Lily certainly deserves it, considering it's the only one she has.

Conversely, the titular "Eagle," Jarrod (Jermaine Clement) has no support system and there is a lot wrong with him. He works at a dead-end job, makes candles in his spare time, and is kind of a dick to people. He uses Lily to pass on an invitation to a party, to that other girl, the one whom everyone seems to like instead of Lily. He converses with Lily for the first time at that party, which doesn't really fit into the classical definition of "party," because it consists entirely of dressing up as your favorite animal, a video game tournament, and throwing shoes at a guy wearing a helmet. His entire family is embarrassed by him, and he is embarrassed of them; in a ridiculous attempt at one-upmanship, he responds to Lily's confession that her parents are dead by telling her that his mother was kicked in the head by a cow, which is why he can't go near cows anymore, and his brother died while saving a child in a fire at a school. Neither of these admissions are true, and the reasons for the lies are a crucial part of why the film achieves a kind of poignancy while highlighting the awkwardness that results not only from being a social outcast in high school and never recovering, but from experiences even more painful than that. But Jarrod can't deal with that on his own; after all, Jarrod is on a revenge mission. His target is Eric Alisi, who picked on him in high school. "Tell him that Justice is waiting for him," he says over the phone to Eric's father. "Waiting...for...him...all right, thank you Justin, bye bye!" This miscommunication is one of many, each often having hilarious results, but really, no one hears Jarrod correctly, not his wheelchair-bound father, or his sister, with whom conversations fall apart into rapid-fire exchanges of "Bitch!" and "Cockhole!"

Except for Lily. There are certainly obstacles to be overcome, or we wouldn't have a movie, or a story at all, but it is incredibly fulfilling to see the effects of Lily's presence on Jarrod and his family, because we knew all along how great of a person she is, we knew from the very beginning: that introductory mirror conversation where her response to "I love you" is "Awesome." Horsley and Clement execute their respective roles with an adroit attention to each character's differing awkwardness; Jarrod is a bit of an asshole sometimes, a complete asshole other times, and Lily is not impervious to pain herself. Isn't that always the case with people who selflessly help others? What we have then, in the end, is a revealing look at how we get over high school, how we get over humiliation, and the deeper scars left by the loss of those whom we love: with a lot of help, and a lot of laughter.

The only failing of the film is the overuse of stop-motion animation, which is endearing and clever at first, but ultimately serves as a device to deliver heavy-handed imagery that undermines the actual story itself. It's unnecessary, really, when the actual characters, and settings, do a great job of telling the story on their own. However, it's not enough to drag the entire thing down, not with the clever script, and clever directing, and clever acting. Much like its central protagonist, Eagle vs Shark is an awkwardly pretty film.

- wpham

In a move that'd make Merrick proud, I'm also posting an embedded video link to the trailer below to help give you an idea of this very film! It comes out in limited release next month! Enjoy!