Eagle vs. Shark
by Taika Waititi
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DVD details
Actor: David Fane, Jemaine Clement, Joel Tobeck, Loren Horsley, Taika WaititiDirector: Taika Waititi
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MIRAMAX
DVD Reviews of Eagle vs. Shark
DVD Review: Brilliant Script
Summary: 5 Stars
Lilly (Loren Horsley) works in a fast food restaurant and garners the respect of no one. But she takes it on the chin and remains curiously sweet. She's got a crush on Jarrod, a narcissist geek with a horrible mullet played by Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame. Jarrod and Lilly hook up at a party one night. (Do you want to have sex? OK.) Jarrod has a mission-to crush a samoan lad who tortured him in school. He returns home to fight his nemesis. I won't give it away, but the ending to this movie had me laughing hysterically. This is a completely original script absent banal comedy and full of emotional depth. You won't see films like this coming out of Hollywood these days. Thank you Taika and the NZ Film Commission.
Many people have compared Eagle to Napoleon Dynamite, but I find the comparison lacking. Yes, Lily and Jarrod are geeks, but the similarities with Napoleon end there. This isn't a geek revenge movie though the plot may seem like that on the face of it. The movie is titled Eagle vs. Shark but it could be titled man vs. woman. Neither Lily or Jarrod run to each other as solace from the outside world. Lily has a warm home life with her brother and Jarrod is pretty solidly convinced of his stature and his ability with women until the end of the movie. It's interesting to see how Lily turns Jarod around. This film is about the balance of power between Lily and Jarod, not geeks vs the world.
There are a lot of good minor characters in this film including Jarrod's sister and her husband and Lily's brother. Jarrod's daughter is played brilliantly by an eccentric little girl whose name I can't find on the DVD. She's cute to watch. I liked Lorena's performance. She brings strength to her role as Lily but doesn't come off aggressive. It must have been a difficult role to play right.
Good extras on the film including some nice deleted scenes. The commentary with Taika was a little off putting. He seems a bit over it. His girlfriend, Lorena Horsely who plays Lily calls from NZ and they talk a bit about the film, but neither one of them seem very into it. It seems like the commentary was added a long long time after the film was made and maybe thrown in because of the success of Conchords. The most interesting commentary comes from the guy that plays Jarrod's brother in law. Taika says things like "that scene comes from the Sundance film workshop" but doesn't explain what that is or why he was there. Flight of the Conchords fans don't buy Eagle to hear any interviews or commentary with Jemaine. He is curiously absent from all the extras here as he was with Conchords. Jemaine seems more over it all these days than anyone. I doubt HBO will get a season 3 out of him unless they throw him mad mad money.
There are a lot of great views of NZ in this film. Loved the camera shot on the playground with Lily running in the mouse wheel with the bay out the back. Gorgeous. Good music from the Phoenix Foundation Horsepower, Pegasus that works well with the film. The soundtrack wasn't chosen for marketing purposes, it actually works with what's going on in the film.
When I see a good film like this, completed for under a million dollars, you wonder what is going on in Hollywood these days that more films like this aren't made. Hollywood is good at throwing money into a lot of dumb scripts with hot actors, but it takes someone like Taika to come along and demonstrate how a good movie is really about a good script, not special effects and pretty people.
Description of Eagle vs. Shark
Miramax Films presents the wickedly offbeat love story, Eagle vs Shark, a funny, fractured romance between two total misfits woven into an all-consuming quest for revenge and shot through with the strange, sweet hilarity of the human condition. When Lily (Horsley), a lonely, oddball fast-food waitress and hopeless romantic, and Jarrod (Clement), another lonely oddball and video game clerk who has spent the last decade plotting revenge against a bully from high school, connect at a dress as your favorite animal party, it s a match seemingly made in outcast Heaven. But when Lily decides to risk everything for love, her hopes are nearly dashed as, after a brief fling, Jarrod dumps her because he s too busy training for his all-important payback mission. But neither of them can anticipate the grit the steadfastly optimistic Lily will show in her heartbreak. As Jarrod's day of reckoning arrives and everything hits the fan, Jarrod and Lily will find something that goes beyond romantic fantasies and revenge faith in who they are.Since the 1980s, the nerd has triumphed in comedies from Weird Science to Napoleon Dynamite, but what about the female of the species? In Eagle vs. Shark, New Zealand's Taika Waititi presents his offbeat romance from the perspective of the likeably quirky Lily (co-writer Loren Horsley). The Meaty Boy cashier fantasizes about the sensitive yet boorish Jarrod (Jemaine Clement from HBO's Flight of the Conchords). Sporting the worst on-screen hairdo since Javier Bardem's pageboy in No Country for Old Men, the video-game wiz visits Lily's fast-food emporium daily, oblivious to the slouchy brunette with the shy smile. Except for her cartoonist brother, Damon (Joel Tobeck), nobody else notices Lily either. When she crashes Jarrod's costume party--dressed as a shark to his eagle--her fortunes begin to change, but there's a catch: Much like Adam Sandler's tightly-wound salesman in P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, Jarrod has a dark side. Not only is he a habitual liar, but he intends to kill his high school nemesis, Eric (David Fane). At first, Lily supports Jarrod's homicidal plan, but their relationship hits a snag when they travel to his hometown for the big face-off (Waititi plays Jarrod?s brother in flashbacks). Suffice to say, no murders take place during the course of Eagle vs. Shark. Stop-motion sequences (revolving around irregular apples), the Phoenix Foundation's electro-pop score, deleted scenes, outtakes, and audio commentary all contribute to the weird charm of Waititi's first feature. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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