Eagle vs. Shark
Indiewood cranks out another boring quirky romance comedy with Eagle vs. Shark. I had so many problems with this I don't know where to start. Okay actually I do -- what is up with that lead female role? Why are all the nerdy male characters in these movies always horribly disgusting, and all the geeky awkward female characters totally not? Is it really believable to cast someone attractive in such a role, I mean can this really happen in real life? This movie suffers all around from unbelievably weird casting -- from the family that looks very unrealistically hodge-podge, to the daughter dressed up as someone who just walked out of a Little Miss Sunshine lookalike contest.
Setting aside the distracting casting issue, the movie starts out with a weird Miranda July-ish monologue, then segues into one of several animated clay segments that make little sense in the context of the movie, and alone aren't very good to begin with. It has gotten comparisons to Napolean Dynamite which makes sense due to the dry humor and 80's set.
Given that the budget was small, it seems better money would have been spent on more script readings or paid actors. The director stated at the Q&A afterwards that he used friends where possible, and that the lead female was actually the catalyst for the creation of the movie. And that he's a big fan of animation. These all sort of explain some of the problems I had, but put together, it just wasn't my cup of tea at all. The entire rest of the audience was howling though, so much that I thought there might be something wrong with me. Well, maybe there is, but I still didn't like this movie.
Comments
When I read the synopsis for this and saw the mention of Napoleon Dynamite, I thought "stay away." It had annoyingly quirky indie comedy written all over it. Sorry you had to suffer through it. Too bad you and Greg didn't make it to Exiled. It was second only to King of Kong for me and a great antidote to the serious docs I'd been seeing.
No Audience Watch?
Posted by: Socialretard | June 1, 2007 09:08 AM
It's not you (or me either because I also disliked this movie.) It's them. Everything in this damn thing seemed like it was ripped from some other movie and made worse (for instance the stop motion animation which was totally reminiscent of Science Of Sleep.)
Posted by: gdd | June 1, 2007 12:45 PM
I think within the genre of quirky indie comedy there can still be gradiations of good and bad (e.g., I actually liked July's film), so I will still take chances going to them, but generally my expectations at this point are pretty low because of how saturated the theaters have become with them lately. Which is kind of ridiculous to say because one comes out seemingly every 6 months or more.
The stop motion definitely seemed like a shoutout to Gondry, but far lamer and far less effective. One of the things about Gondry's stop motions is that they work very seamlessly into scenes like music or background props, they're never really the sole focal point, making them all the more special. Eagle vs. Shark uses it as transition points and scenes in and of themselves as if to call specific attention to the work so that it gets noticed, which I feel is sort of manipulative to the viewer.
I forgot the Audience Watch on this one -- I was going to mention there was a loud obnoxious laughing guy to my left who kept saying "oh my god" every time an actor did something funny.
Posted by: rkn | June 1, 2007 01:30 PM