This goofball micro-budgeted offering comes to us from New Zealand via the Sundance lab so we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the usual Utah scuffmarks. The characters are a disworship of dorks seemingly hellbent on making Napoleon Dynamite look like James Bond. The romance at the film’s soft-centre is of the quirky, oddball variety. Between live action scenes we witness the epic tale of two apple-cores, animated in a way that immediately recalls Hammer and Tongs’ video for Blur’s ‘Coffee and TV’.
So far, so indie-schmindie. But beneath the winsomeness, there’s an endearingly wicked streak to Eagle Vs. Shark. Its heroine is the poignantly unpopular Lily (Jermaine Clement who also co-wrote the screenplay), a charming doofus who lacks the skills required to hold down a McJob or attract the attention of the equally geeky Jarrod, (Hall) the object of her affections. They finally meet at one of his parties – a social occasion where aspie gamers come dressed as their favourite animal. “It’s going to be cool”, explains Jarrod, “My friend’s got a helmet and he’s going to let us throw shoes at his head”.
Sex inevitably follows.
Unlucky for Lily, Jarrod has more than one bat flapping about the belfry. After travelling across the country with Lily in tow, he invites his equally weird extended family to witness, what in his mind, is the superhero social occasion of the century; a final showdown, at the age of 28, with a boy who used to fight with him at school.
Taika Waititi, who makes his feature debut here, skilfully bounces these oddballs between comedy and pathos, with a tone not entirely dissimilar to that of neighbouring Australian offerings The Castle and Muriel’s Wedding.
Jarrod may say things like “sometimes I wish I did have knives coming out of my fists”, but as we discover, there’s more to him than the ridiculousness that meets the eye. Lily, too, the wallflower of the piece, slowly blossoms.
We may not see an actual fight between a shark and an eagle but this is a fine testament to the enduring appeal of the loser.