Eagle vs. Shark

REVIEW
Meet Lily, a sweet but socially challenged fast food worker with a mad crush on nerdish, mullet-sporting man-child, Jarrod. After briefly hooking up at a videogamers’ party dressed as their favorite animals, Lily is enticed by Jarrod’s odd quirks and charmed by his clumsiness in talking to women. When Jarrod reveals that he would love to go back to his hometown to settle an old score with a bully who taunted him, Lily offers to drive him there to complete his mission. But Jarrod’s obsession with his plan leaves him increasingly self-absorbed, and Lily is stuck hanging around his family, who are even weirder than Jarrod. She makes the best of her difficult situation by quietly beginning to empower herself in order to get what she needs. Fusing a catchy indie soundtrack, vivid stop-motion animation sequences, strong chemistry between its leads and a delightful eye for absurd situations, director Taika Waititi’s feature-length debut was compared to Napoleon Dynamite and even the films of Wes Anderson after its premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Chosen as one of Variety’s Ten Young Directors to Watch for in 2007, Waititi creates a fresh and original confection that perfectly captures the angst of being an outsider in this tale of one individual’s attempt to find their own voice.