Eagle vs. Shark

2007 romantic comedy


Rating: 12/20


Plot: A likable misfit named Lily working at a Meaty Boy fast food restaurant falls for an unlikable misfit named Jarrod who is frequently a Meaty Boy customer. The unlikable misfit actually looks like a meaty boy. She shows up at his "dress-as-your-favorite-animal" party (uninvited) and impresses him with her skills at a violent video game. They end up doin' it. Later, Jarrod invites her to his hometown, mostly because he doesn't have a car to get him there, so that he can get his revenge on a high school bully. Jarrod becomes even more unlikable.


Recommended by an anonymous person who apparently knows me well enough to know that I generally like quirky stuff like this. The main reason this didn't quite work for me was that Jarrod was such an unlikable guy. I don't expect all characters in romantic comedies to be likable or anything, but I didn't want things to work out for this guy at all. This movie seems to be an attempt at a Napoleon Dynamite and is stuffed with lots of offbeat characters and offbeat moments, but it's not really consistently funny. I laughed out once during the big video game match when she was playing against a kid dressed as a horse. I may have nearly laughed a few more times. The soundtrack is oppressive, sort of like in Juno. There was some stop-motion animation stuff involving discarded apples and ants that was cute, and there were some other cute moments that make this a lot more entertaining than your average romantic comedy. But for an oddball movie, this is strangely derivative here in 2008.


I showered right before and right after watching this movie.