I’m not sure I took Eagle vs. Shark as it may have been intended. A sort of New Zealand answer to Napoleon Dyna­mite, Eagle vs. Shark is the story of two mis­fit losers find­ing each other when no one else will have them. But I found one char­ac­ter as immensely sym­pa­thetic as the other deplorable, while I sus­pect the film­mak­ers intended them to be seen as a good match, and deserv­ing of a happy end­ing together.

Lily (pretty actress Loren Hors­ley, dressed down in frumpy clothes) may not be look­ing for­ward to any New Zealand beauty pageants, but she’s not un-cute. But being pos­si­bly the sweet­est and nicest girl on the planet does not work to her advan­tage; awk­ward and over-earnest, she’s unable to say no to any­body, even when get­ting fired or dumped. Her only friend is her sweet­heart brother, a car­toon­ist and world’s worst impres­sion­ist. Her favorite answer to each of life’s many dis­ap­point­ments is “it doesn’t matter.”

Fish or fowl?

We first meet Lily at her dead-end mall job at Meaty Bun, the sort of joint where lay­offs are man­aged by lit­er­ally pulling names from a hat (and even that is rigged). She has fallen in love with Jar­rod (Jer­maine Clement), a douchebag with a mul­let who works at the nearby video game store. Jar­rod is a true nerd: creepy and vio­lently deranged. We learn later he is moti­vated by the impos­si­ble ideal of his over-achieving mar­tyred brother (although there are fam­ily secrets to be uncov­ered there), and pos­sesses an ille­git­i­mate daughter.

Jar­rod and Lily have match­ing moles (not to be con­fused with the pro­gres­sive rock band of the same name), and Lily is able to impress him with her nat­ural tal­ent at a grue­some video game. But beyond that, there is lit­tle con­nec­tion beyond their shared isolation.

Pitch­ing a tent

So I found myself root­ing for some­thing at odds with what the film presents as a happy end­ing: for Lily to break free of the poi­so­nous dick Jar­rod. Lily does man­age at one point to say no to some­one for the first time; she turns down a date with an even big­ger loser than Jar­rod. But despite this small sign of per­sonal growth, her unre­quited love for him is so absolute that even after he tries and fails to beat up a para­plegic, she goes on a sui­cide watch to pro­tect him from his brother’s fate.

To be more pos­i­tive, and to explain my three-star rat­ing despite all the neg­a­tiv­ity above: I found Lily and her brother very endear­ing and the film often extremely funny. Awe­some stop motion ani­ma­tion sequences through­out illus­trate the love story through two anthro­po­mor­phized dam­aged apples.

Offi­cial movie site: www.eaglevsshark.net

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to me.

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