Eagle vs. Shark

There's probably no middle ground when it comes Taiki Waititi's Eagle vs. Shark. You'll either flip for the actors' droll line readings and the all around quirky cuteness or simply groan from moment one onward. (Best check out the trailer linked here to gage your interest.) The movie's been compared to Napoleon Dynamite for the reasons I mentioned above, but unlike Napoleon, who was a one note character buried behind his irrational tics, the characters in this film are childishly sweet, admittedly odd, probably a bit emotionally stunted, but still deeply sympathetic. Their tics, at times frustrating, don't hide who they really are or eradicate any feasible sense of humanity in them. They define who they are and give us a gateway into each of their lonely worlds respectively.

Loren Horsley gives a radiant performance as Lily, a shy fast food employee whose socially awkward tendencies only make her more excruciatingly adorable. Horsley squishes her face with nervousness and deadpans just about ever line, but it's with her wonderfully expressive eyes that she delivers the deepest of her character's joys and sorrows. On the surface she's a twerpy cliché, but Horsley actually finds a way to make Lily into a soulful loner, tics and all. The desperate Lily pines mercilessly after a hilariously silly video game store clerk named Jarrod (Jemaine Clement) who probably has the most Napoleon Dynamite-ish persona in the film. It's a great relief then to find that Clement and Waititi found a brilliant way to make the insensitive and agitating Jarrod really click with the film. He's as annoying as Napoleon but he's got the kind of dramatically satisfying material to give his strangeness unexpected depth. When he stamps his foot on the floor after doing something stupid and proclaims "I'm so complicated!" it's funny, pig headed, utterly false, but weirdly tragic too. He's the sort of person you need to get to know to understand and the film follows the process of Lily getting to know him, letting us get to know him as well.

Lily and Jarrod make perhaps the silliest screen couple of the decade and yet you root for them unconditionally. Waititi's vision is so fluid and complete that whether you like his world of misfits or not, you must admit he knows how to define a style and a tone absolutely. The film develops its own strange rhythms and Waititi brings together performance, narrative, cartoon effects, a killer soundtrack (courtesy of The Phoenix Foundation), and just about ever other possible element of film to shape a truly unique (bone-headed Dynamite comparisons aside) vision. This is a masterwork of awkwardness that delivers on every level. It's the grandest of indie clichés: a small film with heart, originality, and quirk to spare.

Grade: A