One of the keys to “Napoleon Dynamite” is that it never strained to get its laughs. It was just gloriously, blissfully weird.
You can’t help but invoke Napoleon’s geeky ghost when it comes to “Eagle vs. Shark,” a new film from New Zealand. This hymn to life’s losers aims for the same crazy vibe, but it tries too hard.
The movie begins by introducing us to the wonderfully maladjusted Lily (Loren Horsley), who works at a burger place (their innovation: two beef patties wrapped around a sesame seed bun). She has an enduring, inexplicable crush on Jarrod (Jermaine Clement), who works at the same mall.
It tells you something that the high point of their relationship comes when Lily attends an animal-costume party at Jarrod’s place, and nearly defeats him in an annual video-game tourney. Later in the evening, they have very brief sex.
She’s dressed as a shark, he’s dressed as an eagle.
Much of the opening half-hour is a perfectly-timed comedy of awkwardness, aided immeasurably by the laser-beam focus of the two actors. Both are Kiwi performers mostly unfamiliar here (although Clement’s spoof band, Flight of the Conchords, now has its own HBO series).
Their geeky performances are on the money, and Loren Horsley (who also worked on developing the original story idea) is exact at catching the kind of quiet desperation – which somehow always manages to be chipper – Lily has in abundance. Her giant eyes and nerdy facial expressions are worthy of a silent-film actress. But don’t get me wrong – the New Zealand accents somehow make the dialogue that much funnier.
But once the film travels to Jarrod’s small-town home, where he plans to take revenge on an old high-school bully, the movie gets forced. To be with characters this self-consciously wacky requires perfect pitch (as in “Napoleon Dynamite”), and “Eagle vs. Shark” doesn’t have that.
The director-writer is Taika Waititi, who had a short film nominated for an Oscar a couple of years ago. This movie feels like a good short that goes on too long, but it has little touches – like Jarrod’s friend with a computer virus – that suggest a genuinely funny talent. Next time, Waititi, Horsley and Co. need to get out from under a “Dynamite” shadow.
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