'Eagle' fails to fly

I will accept the notion that "love is blind," but Taika Cohen's "Eagle vs. Shark" asks us to accept that love is also deaf, dumb and idiotic to boot.

The movie presents us with a character named Jarrod, who, as played by Jemaine Clement, has not one single redeeming feature. It's not only that he is absolutely clueless. We can accept--even embrace--cluelessness when the movie shares in the joke as it did Amy Heckerling's delightful comedy aptly called "Clueless." But "Eagle vs. Shark" fails to recognize the trait as a serious character flaw. For example, Jarrod fathered a daughter through a one-time liaison but not only does he fail to accept any parental responsibility, he barely even acknowledges his own daughter's very existence even when they share the same household. That's not funny, it's grossly irresponsible. That's not being a "Napoleon Dynamite"-type nerd, that would be villainous except for the fact that this blob has no human characteristics that would make one react to him with any kind of emotion. You don't hate the guy--you just want to avoid him.

Which makes it totally beyond belief that anyone--even someone whom we are told is as lonely and as much the target of ridicule as Lily (Loren Horsley)--would want to spend any amount of time with him. Lily, we are told, is supposed to be a "plain Jane," but she is not brain dead. That she exercises free will to spend any amount of time at all with this jerk defies even the most radical description of the "love is blind" platitude.

As the movie begins, Lily works behind the counter at a fast-food burger joint and longs for the noon hour each day when her dream "hunk" (Jarrod) walks through the door. Jarrod, however, has the hots for one of Lily's co-workers and one day he walks in with a printed invitation to a party he is hosting that he wants to give this co-worker. She is not there, however, so Jarrod asks Lily to deliver it for him. She does, but when the co-worker, who has correctly identified what spending any time with Jarrod would be like, throws the invitation in the trash, Lily retrieves it. This is Jarrod's idea of a fun party: You dress up like your favorite animal and come over to his apartment and play violent video games. For the first 10 minutes or so of the film's running time, we learn Lily has this thing about sharks, so she comes dressed as a shark (see picture above with Jarrod, of course, as the eagle). Following the party, however, we never hear Lily mention sharks again.

One thing leads to another and soon Jarrod is inviting Lily to his family's home where we meet the rest of his highly dysfunctional, non-funny, family, one of whom is Jarrod's father who rides around in a wheelchair for no discernible reason. (Ho! Ho! Ho!) It seems Jarrod was picked on by a Samoan bully when he was in school and, upon learning the Samoan is about to return from somewhere, Jarrod is vowing revenge. I was deathly afraid of where this whole "revenge" bit was going to go, but I soothed my anxieties by reassuring myself that this film could not be bankrupt enough to trot out two tasteless wheelchair jokes. Wrong!

I must admit, however, that I did see possibilities in Ms. Horsley. Unfortunately, when I looked into her file on IMDB, I did not see she had anything else on the horizon. I could see how a movie like "Eagle vs. Shark" could take a bite out of lot of careers, but I sincerely hope it hasn't completely devoured hers.

Grade: D+