Eagle vs Shark is a New Zealand-made romantic comedy directed by Academy Award nominee Taika Waititi and financed by the New Zealand Film Commission. The screenplay was also written by Waititi, based on the character of Lily created by Loren Horsley.[1]
The film had its world premiere at Sundance in the World Cinema Dramatic section of the festival and opened in the US on June 15, 2007 in New York and Los Angeles.
The soundtrack to Eagle vs Shark features New Zealand artists The Phoenix Foundation, Age Pryor, The Reduction Agents, and Tessa Rain, along with M Ward, Devendra Banhart and British group The Stone Roses. Along with a number of songs The Phoenix Foundation wrote the original score for the film. The soundtrack is available through Hollywood Records.
Plot
Lily waits for Jarrod at Meaty Boy.
Lily is a shy, wistful girl, a songwriter when no one is listening, and a cashier at a fast food restaurant who has a crush from afar on Jarrod, a geek who works in a video game store, and is more interested in Lilly's attractive workmate, Jenny.
With Jenny not at work one day, Jarrod gives Lily an invitation to his "dress as your favourite animal" party to pass along to her, but Jenny crumples it up and throws it away upon receiving it. Lily retrieves the invitation from the trash, hoping Jarrod won't mind when she shows up.
The party is sparsely attended with what are apparently teenage and adult customers of Jarrod's store, all dressed extravagantly as their favourite animal. Jarrod is impressed with Lily's shark costume (though he insists an eagle is slightly better) as well as her savant-like video game skills, making it to the finals of a Fight Man video game competition, though she is no match for defending champion, Jarrod (mainly because she spends most of their contest staring at him). Jarrod questions Lily and learns that her parents are dead, having had heart attacks. He says that both his brother (Gordon) and his mother are dead. (He says his mother died by getting kicked in the head by a cow.) After the conversation, they kiss and have very brief sex.
Lily now considers Jarrod her boyfriend and hangs out around his store. They set a date one night to see "the new Wolverine movie" at the local Cine-Saurus Rex. Jarrod fails to turn up. He comes by Lily's house later that night to apologize, saying he was depressed and needed to be alone. He later says that he has to kill a man in his hometown who used to bully him in high school, but laments that he has no car to get there. Lily asks Damon, and he consents to drive Jarrod and Lily to Jarrod's home for the week to meet his fate and complete his fantasy revenge mission.
On the way to Jarrod's home town, Damon offers Lily and Jarrod apples to eat. Jarrod take a bite only to discover that his apple it rotten. He throws it out the window into a river that they are driving past. This apple then becomes the representation of Jarrod in several claymation scenes of the movie. Upon arriving, Damon and Lily discover that the family is just as bizarre as Jarrod himself. Jarrod's sister (Nancy) and brother-in-law (Doug) seem to sell all kinds of "sell from home products", like questionable make-up kits, knives, and their own athletic jumpsuit clothing line "Awesome apparel". Jarrod's dad is a withdrawn, balding man in a wheelchair. After awkward introductions and a fight between Nancy and Jarrod, Jarrod leaves when he learns that he and Lilly must sleep out in a tent in the backyard because there is no room for them in the house.
Jarrod spends his time alternating between trying to win his dad's affection (by any matter possible) and training for his impending fight with his high school bully Eric Elisi. It becomes quite clear that the father loved his other son Gordon much more than Jarrod. Gordon was very successful, winning many ribbons, especially in running. When Lily asks how Gordon died, Jarrod says that he died saving a kid from a fire at the school. Lily meets with Mason - Jarrod's best friend and computer geek who has pornography in his computer - to find out that Eric will return from Samoa the next day. The three then run to Eric's house to drop off Jarrod's invitation to the fight between the two of them.
Gordon's fiance, Tracy, comes over. It is quite obviously that she is a person of similar success to Gordon and that the father even loves her more than Jarrod. Jarrod tries to impress his father with the news that he's dating Lily, but the father isn't impressed. The two go to the beach and Lily finds a rock shaped like a heart that she shows Jarrod. Shortly, there after Jarrod breaks up with Lily on the beach because he's too busy with the revenge mission and "too complex" for a relationship. Lily is visibly upset but tries to hide it.
The father spends most of his time watching an old tape of Gordon winning a track meet and reliving the victory that he felt at that time. In the video, Gordon wins the race and is congratulated obsessively by his father. Tracy comes over and the two are celebrating. Jarrod then attempts to come over and is pushed away by the father. Seeing his father watching this and feeling even more alienated, Jarrod announces that he is dating Tracy. The father is crushed. Attempting to make good on this statement, Jarrod takes flowers over to Tracy's house and spends the day with her on the beach trying to impress her with all the fighting "skills" that he has. She isn't impressed.
Meanwhile, it's been revealed that Jarrod has a little girl who is nine that he sees only occasionally from a previous random sexual encounter at a party. Lily and the girl walk with the father around town coming to a hill. He refuses to go any farther, holding the wheels of his wheelchair and finally getting up out of his wheelchair and walking himself and his wheelchair home (proving that there is no real reason that he needs it). Lily and the girl continue up the hill where the girl says that "That's where my Uncle Gordon died", bringing up that Gordon did not die saving a kid from a fire as Jarrod had said, but rather by committing suicide.
They return home and the family eats dinner. Lily tells a silly joke and the whole group gets along very well. Jarrod comes home to find the group laughing and then kills the mood by saying that he'd been with Tracy all day and that they'd been laughing like that, "but like ten times more laughter". Lily, annoyed by this, leaves the house and takes her sleeping bag from the tent, choosing to sleep over on the other side of the yard instead. Jarrod is annoyed by this and moves the whole tent over to her and sleeps inside it (though it collapses on top of him). The next morning, Lily wakes up to find Jarrod semi-sleeping on her, though he insists that it's her doing that he ended up that way.
Finally, annoyed by Jarrod's behavior, Lily decides to go with Doug and Nancy to a local party. She gets very drunk and dances with a lot of boys while Jarrod watches, looking extremely jealous, from the other side of the party. The whole party loves Lily. Eventually, she runs off, ripping off all her clothes to sleep naked in the bushes somewhere that night. Jarrod waits up for her. Then he has his battle.
[1]
Cast
Production
The film's script was workshopped at the Sundance Film Festival Director's and Screenwriter's Labs in June, 2005.[2] The script was sold in August and given a budget of NZ$1.8M ($1.35M US Dollars). It was shot entirely in New Zealand, in and around Wellington and Porirua, during 25 days in October and November 2005 with a crew of 35 workers.[1][3]
The film is composed mostly of live action, but segments within the film are done in stop motion by Another Planet Ltd., utilizing both props and actors.[1]
Critical reception
The film received mixed reviews, receiving a rating of 55/100 on Metacritic[4] and a 54% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes[5]. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes was that while there were "frequent moments of wit and mordant humor, Eagle vs Shark needs more to distinguish itself from other precious, Napoleon Dynamite-ish comedies' moments."[6] Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal commented that "...'Eagle vs Shark' has its own distinctive style, partly thanks to whimsical little interludes of animation, but mainly because it ties blithe absurdity to a rock bed of emotional truth."[7] Jim Ridley of the Village Voice noted the dissimilarity to Napoleon Dynamite saying "Napoleon Dynamite looks like Cary Grant next to the hero of this Kiwi quirk-a-thon: a hulking, sullen creep named Jarrod whose goony sulking, petulant selfishness and dweeby videogame obsession somehow work like Spanish fly on mousy burger-flipper Lily."[8]
Distribution
At Cannes 2006 it was announced that Miramax Films had purchased the North American theatrical rights after watching a five-minute trailer.[9]
Box office
Eagle vs Shark opened on Friday, June 15, 2007 on three screens (one in New York City, two in Los Angeles) grossing $20,361: an average of $6,787 per screen.[10] This was preceded by a series of free screenings, some with a Q&A with Taika Waititi and Loren Horsley, in certain cities to gain a word of mouth buzz.[3]
The film expanded to 18 screens the following week, June 22, 2007. It took in $35,597, a gain of +74.8% over its opening numbers.[10]
The creators of the movie asked freelance-design site DeviantArt to hold a competition to come up with a poster for the movie.[11] The winning poster, by DeviantArt user 'puggdogg', was used at movie theaters worldwide.[12]
Home Media
Eagle Vs Shark was released January 8, 2008 on DVD. Bonus features include a commentary by director Taika Waititi, outtakes, deleted scenes with optional commentary, and The Phoenix Foundation music video "Going Fishing".
References
External links
