"So it's basically the New Zeeland version of Napoleon Dynamite?" If you haven't seen Eagle Vs. Shark that's what you're thinking. There are plenty of laughs like in Napoleon Dynamite, but you know that scene at the end of the movie where Napoleon sticks his neck out for Pedro and his awkwardness becomes more than just funny, it becomes grace in some sort of odd way? Well, in Eagle Vs. Shark that isn't just the finale, that's really the center of the film.
The trailer is a bit misleading in how it portrays this film. From the trailer one would assume that Jarrod (Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords ) is the main character and awkwardly endearing. Well, as it turns out Lily (Loren Horsley) might be better called the main character and it is her awkwardness that is both endearing and is her (and Jarrod's) saving grace. All the while Jarrod is a bit of a self-absorbed ass.
Both Jarrod and Lily are brutally awkward and this seems like a match made in heaven. That is until Jarrod invites Lily to go with him as he returns to his childhood home to take vengeance on Eric, an old schoolmate who used to pick on Jarrod. Here is where the difference in the characters Lily and Jarrod begins to appear. Both have had assorted pasts where they were the butt of others' jokes and the ridicule (Jarrod was picked on growing up and was thought of as a screw-up by his father no matter how hard he tried while Lily was fired from her job by her boss who play a nasty trick on her and is dumped (and stranded) by Jarrod after traveling with him to meet his family), but somehow they have come through these lives with very different pictures of how to go on...with very different pictures of what makes up a life.
When Jarrod fails (he gets beat up (again) by Eric who is now in a wheelchair) to win his father's love/appreciation, fails to be "cool," fails to win over his new "girlfriend," etc. he come to the conclusion that he is a "loser."
What is so beautiful about this scene is that we are able to see Lily's past and awkwardness in a new light. She sees her present reality not as failure, but as grace... grace that she has been chewed up and spit out and that she is still alive to be spit out at all. It might seem trite, but there is so much beauty in Lily's ability to experience this grace. And this isn't just a "change your perspective" sort of thing, because Lily's experience of grace begets grace as she extends it to Jarrod. Lily extends a grace that not only forgives, but pursues (as we see in the montage of the above clip).
We expect laughs from this film and we get them (see trailer below). But we get a good dose of grace and love as well, which makes it hard for me to categorize this film as simply "a comedy" or as the New Zeeland version of Napoleon Dynamite.
Full Trailer:
