Review: Kat Cole

Eagle VS. Shark (2007)

Director: Taika Cohen

Lily (Loren Horsley) is a shy, strange and awkward girl working her last week as a cashier at a fast food restaurant. Lily has developed a crush on one of the stores’ regulars; Jarrod (Jermaine Clement), an equally awkward but apparently self-assured geek who works in a local video games store. Jarrod manages to resist Lily’s initial advances in the form of free cheese on his burger, though he does not refuse her odd offer of a free upgrade to big fries with his meal.

Jarrod much prefers Jenny, another - more conventionally attractive – cashier at the restaurant.  One day Jarrod brings Jenny an invitation to his come-as-your-favourite-animal party, though she is not working that day so he reluctantly leaves it with Lily to pass on, which she does only to witness Jenny mock Jarrod’s interest and throw the invite into the trash. Lily fishes it out of the bin and simultaneously discovers the true – and rather harsh - reason as to why she recently became redundant from her restaurant job.

Lily decides to attend the party with her brother Damon who is already a friend of Jarrod, hoping that he will not mind.  Jarrod is impressed with her shark costume, amusingly remarking that he almost came as that animal himself, but then realised that an eagle – his costume – was “slightly better”. After an impressive stint by Lily on a video game called Fight Man, Jarrod’s interest is sparked and the two end up in bed:

Jarrod: You wanna have sex?

…

Lily: Ummm. OK.

After the seemingly mediocre event, Lily decides her new career should be to (innocently) stalk Jarrod as much a possible. The rest of the film is very much built around character development (especially that of Jarrod) and acts to document how two weirdoes can fall in love despite their problems.