Excellent but underrated film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"You sucka, you better watch out you fool. Yay fool. Hey fool. Sucka. You sucka. You foolish sucka. Better watch out. This is the piper, and I want to be pied...paid. Sucka." - Jarrod."I'm so complex!" - Jarrod Taika Waititi directs "Eagle vs Shark". The plot? Jemaine Clement plays Jarrod, a bullied, belittled and battered video game geek who's preoccupied with proving his worth. As he suffers from feelings of inadequacy, Jarrod relies on a variety of bizarre coping mechanisms, some of which involve him holding video game contests so that he may destroy his opponents and boost his ego.Into Jarrod's life steps Lily, played by Loren Horsle. Lily loves Jarrod unconditionally, sees in the guy something no one else does, but Jarrod's too blind to realise this. For much of the film he's oblivious to the doe-eyed girl attached to his side.The film's a comedy, but will only appeal to fans of subtle, weird humour, where bizarre intonations, inflections and mannerisms are lovingly rolled out. "Eagle vs Shark's" style, in which amplified oddness meets low-key comedy, is strongly resemblant of Jared Hess' films, one of which also starred Clement ("Gentlemen Broncos"). Beyond this, actress Loren Horsley – acting primarily with her big eyes and come-hither looks – does good work. The rest of the cast are an assortment of oddballs, goofs and weirdos.8.5/10 - "Napoleon Dynamite" meets Sigmund Freud. Worth two viewings.

After a summer night of mellow festival dancing, we ended up in sleeping bags watching the open air screening of this film. The drizzling sound of light rain, which the sweltering heat turned into immediate steam, fed into our personal soundtrack and added another side to romanticism. This exceptional film entertains a sweet awkwardness which is glamorously embodied by its two main protagonists. Cartoonish movements, looks and dialogues convey the insecurities of almost grown-ups. To begin with we are asked to be open-minded and to step bravely into a world where adults live in kids' universes. In this strange dimension we are confronted with the seemingly classical tale of girl meets boy. But the film offers us another take on love. We are drawn into a beautifully funny and sad tale about outsiders, wannabes and true heroes. By the video game scene at the latest we realise who is true hero and who is mere sidekick. We encounter another or maybe even truer version of the shiny knight who is mesmerising the audience not by out-shining everyone else or by occupying the centre stage but by holding back for the sake of others. More so, we are invited to discover who is usually absent in the tales of shiny armour and chivalry: the person who makes the hero. This person turns out to be the secret star of the film. She breaks our hearts because she is the one who loves. We are falling slowly for her and for her persistence which at some point excels our own. Confronted with the sweltering heat of a long festival summer and with the painfully enduring love of a heroic female, some of us fell asleep with sweaty eyes and blazing hearts.

Taika Cohen's lo-fi love/hate story resembles Napoleon Dynamite not just in terms of its bad 80s sportswear, unmanageable hair, and blank-faced brand of humour, but also in its recognition of the fact that the central nerd is not a well-meaning loser, but actually bit of a git. Borderline sociopath and self-proclaimed depressive in Jarrod's (Jemaine Clement) case. While this provides the seed for a more soulful film than Jared Hess's minor classic, it also lacks that film's joke quotient. For a quirky sub-90-minuter with minute pretensions, played alongside an animated love story played out by half-eaten fruit, Jarrod is simply too bleak a character. Meanwhile, Lily (Loren Horsley) is too sketchy to win our sympathy; too empty to provide the narrative with anything but a bucket for Jarrod's often wittily written bile. By the time the repetition starts kicking in at about the hour mark, you'll be wishing she'd just walk home.

Eagle vs. Shark is a love story of two lonely people, who're socially distant - to say the least - from 'normality'. But what is normality anyways? Is it necessarily something that one should reach for? That's one of the main questions that Taika Cohen raises, and also the very thing that makes this piece quite extraordinary in its own way. It's like a reformed version of Peter Pan.Though Eagle vs. Shark is a love story and a comedy, romantic comedy isn't a very good word for it. It actually has a lot of tragical aspects to it, and it isn't all that lighthearted one might assume. It's a tragicomical story of two social misfits - one of which has stuck in a childlike behaviour because of all of the trauma he has faced in his past, and the other one who feels like a total outcast of the society, because of all of the rejection she has faced in her social life.Eagle vs. Shark has often been compared to "Little Miss Sunshine" and it does have - besides the somewhat similar type of humour - one major similarity in it's themes - the importance of family. It is the route and solution to all of their heartaches and traumas. Having one might drive you in to madness, but not having one is just twice as awful. This is also at the same time the strongest, and the weakest link of Eagle vs Shark. Since the family issues are thematically the whole core of the movie, it should have concentrated more on those issues. It passes the whole subject too hastely - thus sadly never reaching such depth in it's characters that it could have reached.Eagle vs. Shark manages not to fall in to any of the typical romance clichés. It goes by it's own heartwarmingly peculiar ways from the beginning to the end, balancing between comedy and drama the whole way. It's almost impossible to even categorize it in any way. Even though I wouldn't cinematically call it a masterpiece or anything, it still is really a one of a kind.