Hey Jarrod, you look like Wolverine

My exams finished yesterday! Brilliant! How did they go? Let's move on... (Although my last sentence in the last essay of the last exam was "For shame!")

So to celebrate yesterday I had a couple of beers with the lads, and then watched the New Zealand indie 'Eagle Vs. Shark', which played at, and won at, this year's Sundance. The trailer pretty much tells what you to expect, and it's hard to watch it and not think about Napoleon Dynamite, what with the characters almost entirely being quirky archetypes. One of the guys from Flight of the Conchords is the main guy and plays the awkward, deadpan Jarrod, who's alienated from his family and is on a mission to avenge being bullied in high school. He's the eagle. Lily is the shark, and she's got a crush on Jarrod. Why? Who knows.

There are plenty of laughs in the first half, mostly at the crazy things that these kooks get up to - like throwing shoes at a guy in a helmet - but there isn't a whole lot of depth to it. The second act, when you learn about Jarrod's family background is a little more profound, but even so I struggled to really care. There is a climactic showdown with the bully at the end, and unfortunately, I could predict what would happen an hour before it did happen. Ultimately, there wasn't too much heart in the film, and without that, you end up just laughing at the characters, and not feeling for them. There's nothing wrong, of course, with shallow films just playing it for the laughs but when there is emotional heaviness brought in - as there is in the second act here - it has to resonate, and there wasn't too much of that with 'Eagle vs. Shark'.

But the Roses did play over the end credits. Nice one.

[download The Stone Roses - This is the One]