Even serious dramas usually provide some comic relief from the heavy emotions on screen. So when you don’t laugh even once during what’s supposed to be a comedy you know there’s something wrong.
And there’s something very, very wrong with Eagle vs Shark, the latest loser comedy that seeks to cash in on Napoleon Dynamite.
This is a nerd comedy about video game employee Jarrod who finds love with his female equivalent in Lily, a recently sacked fast food server. They become lovers after attending his animal-themed party. She then accompanies him to his hometown so he can avenge himself on a schoolyard bully.
The thing with Napoleon Dynamite was that he was likeable in his deeply eccentric, childish manner. Jarrod’s just an infantile idiot – and a preening, self-obsessed fool. Perhaps that’s the point, but I spent 86 long, long minutes wondering whether Lily was actually brain damaged for loving him.
The filmmakers blithely assume we’ll find non-sequitur nerd talk and trash taste thrift store clothing funny and charming. To me, it’s a sneering attitude – mercilessly making these characters the most pathetic losers ever, and then expecting us to find it somehow cute or ironic is insulting.
Eagle vs Shark’s only redeeming qualities are the lovely cinematography and an agreeable score from The Phoenix Foundation.
If you want to see a lot of adult actors acting like five-year-old kids, this is your movie. I just wanted it to end.
