Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

If you're going to make fun of awkward chavs, even with the best will in the world, you have to avoid simply laughing at them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 17, 2007

From the seemingly helpless geriatric who gets up to push his own wheelchair to the genial brother who constantly mimics movie stars, however, Taika Cohen's film seems nothing so much as Little Britain Down Under.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2007

The film wants to be your cuddly, quirky friend, and makes you feel bad for not returning the affection.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 17, 2007

Lead couple Lily (Loren Horsley) and Jarrod (Jemaine Clement) are such unoriginal, checklist misfits that there's little about them to celebrate or even stomach.

| Aug 17, 2007

Eagle vs Shark lays on the whimsy with a trowel, almost smothering the real talent of an endearing cast. Provincial New Zealand.

| Aug 17, 2007

You don't have to be a schoolyard bully to find yourself longing to administer swift, vicious wedgies to the nerdish inhabitants of this kitsch Kiwi excursion.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 17, 2007

Eagle vs Shark is a quirky New Zealand comedy which unravels with rather less off-beat joie de vivre than Napoleon Dynamite did.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 17, 2007

New Zealand's answer to Napoleon Dynamite.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2007

So quirky that it's almost in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own antic whimsy at times, but a comic delight destined for cult adoration.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2007

Self-consciously quirky but hard to dislike, with laugh-out-loud moments and a refreshingly unappealing hero.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 14, 2007

The movie's idea of funny is giving the two lovers identical moles bordering their upper lips.

| Jul 27, 2007

Underneath the quirk there's a real heart.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 17, 2007

Yes, the nerdy loser thing has been done to death, but writer-director Taika Cohen brings surprising depth to this film...Napoleon Dynamite dreams of being this movie.

| Jul 13, 2007

So the only real argument I can make for Eagle vs. Shark, a stupid-absurdist comedy from New Zealand, is that I laughed a lot, often despite myself, and that while I might not be able to wholly justify it, I can mount a questionable defense.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 13, 2007

Eagle vs. Shark is exactly how it sounds -- weird yet harmless, easy to get into, sugary all the way through.

Full Review | Jul 11, 2007

I think this film was already made, and it was called Napoleon Dynamite.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2007

Eagle vs. Shark might have seemed amusingly original, albeit in a self-consciously quirky, indie-movie kind of way, if Napoleon Dynamite didn't already exist.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 6, 2007

Ideal entertainment for anyone who found the stark realism of Napoleon Dynamite too painful to deal with.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2007

[Director] Waititi's obviously a talent, but here he seems to be trying too hard to not try too hard; he's undermining the cleverness of the writing with the thudding hulk of its delivery.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 27, 2007