Eagle vs Shark

When we got this movie via Netflix, the blurb made it sound pretty cool.  In my mind I envisioned two American misfits who turn the hierarchy of high school upside down in some schemey way.  Instead it was just a crappy movie that wasn’t even funny.

The blurb tells us that social misfit Lily is in love with Jarrod, a fellow outcast.  Together they take down a school bully and she helps reunite a family.  Something along those lines.

What really happens is this.  They are both social outcasts to be sure.  Lily works at a Burger Joint where, when they fire people, they all write names down on a sheet of paper and one is drawn from a hat.  Later on we discover that it isn’t so luck of the draw anyway as all of the pieces of paper have Lily’s name written on them.  But every day at a little bit after noon Jarrod comes to the burger joint for lunch and every day he chooses the other girl instead of Lily.  Then one day he has no choice but to go into Lily’s line.  She’s ecstatic and gets him some free fries.  He has an invitation to his party to give to the other girl and doesn’t even ask Lily if she’s interested.  Later on that day Lily gives the invitation to her and asks if she can tag along.  The girl laughs at both Lily & Jarrod’s invitation and wanders away.

Lily steals the invitation out of the garbage bin (where she discovers the pieces of paper with her name on them) and gets her brother to take her to this party.  This party is where the name of the movie is derived from.  Each person is to dress up as their favorite animal.  So Lily chooses Shark and Jarrod chooses Eagle.  At the party they play a Soul Caliber like game and Lily’s kicking butt.  When it comes to the showdown between her and Jarrod, she’s too busy staring at him to play and he ends up winning.  That night they do the deed and begin their relationship.

Jarrod tells Lily that he needs to go back home because he has unfinished business to take care of.  He has plans to beat up the guy who used to tease him mercilessly in high school.  So they roadtrip it to his home and she meets his family.  They aren’t real cordial and you can tell that they hate Jarrod.  At his home we also meet his daughter, whose role in this film is nothing more than to be a little girl.  You never see any heart warming scenes between the two and Jarrod himelf admits that he hardly ever sees her.

His own family dynamics are off kilter.  Jarrod’s mother, whom he previously told Lily was dead, is actually divorced and living somewhere down under with her lesbian lover.  His brother, who actually is dead, has a cloud of mystery surrounding his death.  Jarrod says that he died in a fire saving kids but his dad reveals the truth to her that he flung himself over the rocks into the water.  After Jarrod dumps Lily to be with Tracy (his dead brother’s fiance), Lily forges a bond with the family.  In the end she is the one who gets Jarrod and his dad to reconcile.

On the bully front, we discover at the end that the bully is now a paraplegic and Jarrod decides to fight him anyway.  Despite having every advantage, Jarrod gets beaten by his old high school foe.  Nobody can believe that he actually attacked someone in a wheelchair and walk away disgusted.  It is only Lily who keeps him company despite his declaration of wanting to be left alone.  At the end of the day she tells him that he should know two things.  One is that she’s leaving in the morning on the bus and two, that could change.  The next morning the entire family (minus Jarrod) walk her to the bus station and there’s Jarrod with a huge bouquet of lilies.

I give the movie props for some of the scenes in the movie that were cool.  Some bits of it were done in what looks like claymation and when they manipulated the scene of Lily’s sleeping bag chasing Jarrod’s around the hill was cool.  But in the entirety of the movie, it seemed out of place and too strange.  The dialogue was pretty dull and the jokes were not funny.  My husband says that it wasn’t even good quirky like Napolean Dynamite (which, for the record, I hate that movie too), it was just…. weird.  So no, I don’t recommend this movie at all.