'Eagle vs Shark': A Mismatch Made in Kiwi Heaven

Jemaine Clement and Loren Horsley are the romantic odd couple at the center of this small but charming tale from New Zealand. (By Matt Grace -- Miramax Via Associated Press)

"Eagle vs Shark" fits into a small niche of films generally unloved by the larger public. Would that be: "Inter-species fighting to the death"? No, thank heaven(though my money would have been on the shark). No, it would be "hopeless nerds muddle through" movies.

"Napoleon Dynamite" would be more or less the ne plus ultra of such a canon and if you gave me a weekend, I might think of another one. "Eagle" isn't as funny or sharp as "Napoleon," but it has its own weird set of pleasures, and those tired unto death of 'splosions and big gooey CGI monsters might well put some time into this one and remember that there are actual human beings out there in reality.

The reality in question is New Zealand, and one of the aspects of the film that probably went unnoticed in its native land but jumps out at American viewers is the racial interpenetration. Maori and white live together, cohabit, don't even seem to notice the difference in skin colors, eye shapes and hair thickness. They're so lucky: Unlike here, these meaningless differences remain as they should be -- meaningless.

Anyhow, our two lovebirds are Jarrod (Jemaine Clement) and Lily (Loren Horsley), 20-somethings absorbed in mall culture in suburban Auckland. She works at the fast-food joint, hustling burgers; he's the guru and head stud of a computer store.

The film begins with her, and Horsley -- wan, scrawny, big-eyed and desperate -- is one of those poor people radiating gentleness, good spirit, generosity and virtue that of course is despised by the world at large. In fact, she's so damned sweet nobody can stand her, and the burger joint management is working a crew to get her off the job.

Meanwhile, Jarrod rules his own little domain, a big fish in a very small pond, or rather, a small fish in an even smaller pond. Seeing her forlorn, he asks her to a party at his house, the gimmick of which is that "You have to dress like your favorite animal." Hmm, how clueless, pathetic, self-deluding and yet adorable is that?

She shows up as a shark -- fearsome, carnivorous, merciless -- which she is not. He is the mighty eagle -- noble, graceful, free -- all of which he also is not.

Soon the purpose of the party is revealed: The Mighty Eagle is some kind of vid game champ -- the one area of life he's mastered -- and wants to take on all comers. Side by side they stand, game console in hand, zapping away. She almost beats him. It's love at first zap.

Soon, she's drawn into his strange world, leaving her own strange world behind. One of the things the movie gets so adroitly is how adaptable humanity is: Lily is absorbed by Jarrod's Maori-white family and its odd vibrations of mockery, tragedy, self-loathing, dysfunction and clumsy, inexpressible love. The family is haunted by the suicide of Jarrod's spectacular older brother, a star athlete and scholar whom they still worship on home movie reels (the remembered brother is played by the movie's director, Taika Waititi).

You think: How can this sweet, smart girl fall in with these pathetic losers. Yet after a while, the mourning father in the wheelchair, the goofy, feckless, unemployed older brother, the smiling but zaftig older sister and her loser husband, the little girl -- they all seem quite normal, and Lily, in her way, grows to love them.

Meanwhile, Jarrod has a special mission. He's been in training to fight the schoolboy who beat him up in high school and believes he's now a ninja-strong man-thumper, though everyone, particularly the audience, is aware what a delusion this is. You know what's going to happen at his big redemption because the naturalism of the movie, its clever grip on the banal and quotidian, of course make such melodramatic, movie-style concepts as "redemption" irrelevant. "Redemption" is for movies; in real life, you just sort of muddle through.

"Eagle vs Shark" isn't slick by any means, and in certain ways seems almost childish. Poor lumpy Jarrod is particularly hard to stomach, as many will consider him unfit for the desperately decent Lily. And the movie isn't funny in any big way so much as recognizable in its patterns of dysfunction, delusion and futility. But you believe in it because you believe in the small but decent lives of its characters, a rare experience for a hot weekend in June.

Eagles vs Shark (88 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for profanity, some sexual content and brief animated violence.