New Zealand writer-director Taika Waititi's quirky feature debut is probably the first comedy to look directly to NAPOLEON DYNAMITE for inspiration, and while it will win no points for originality and often teeters precariously twee-ward, it's an undeniable charmer.
Lank hair tucked behind one ear and screwed-up mouth set in the closest thing she can manage to an alluring smile, gangly Lily (Loren Horsley) waits anxiously behind the counter at the local Meaty Boy burger franchise for the clock to strike noon. That's when Jarrod Lough (Jemaine Clement), an unappealing vision in flowing mullet and Members Only jacket, comes strutting in for lunch. He may not look like much to anyone else — particularly Jenny, the pretty blonde cashier he obviously prefers to Lily — but he's the secret love of Lily's small, sad life. They'd be perfect together, she thinks; they even share matching upper-lip moles. When Jarrod invites Jenny to his come-as-your-favorite-animal party, Lily seizes the moment and decides to crash the party herself, with her brother, Damon (Joel Tobeck), a good-natured cartoonist with a knack for terrible celebrity impersonations, as her date. Lily comes dressed as a shark, that lonely predator with a keen sense for the distressed or wounded, and she impresses the mighty eagle-costumed Jarrod with her violent-video-game skills during the party's climactic "Fight Man" competition. They're soon swapping dead-parent stories in Jarrod's bedroom — Lily's parents both suffered heart attacks; Jarrod's mother was kicked in the head by a cow — and after Jarrod shows Lily his watch-wallet invention and his homemade candle art, they have sex beneath his wall-mounted nunchucks. Jarrod blows her off for a movie date the following night, but they become a couple of sorts; he even lets her in on the long-gestating revenge mission he's about to execute: beating up Eric Elisi (David Fane), the Samoan bully who made Jarrod's school life a living hell. Eric is finally returning to their hometown, and now all Jarrod needs to take his vengeance is a ride, so Lily volunteers Damon and his car. But once in the bosom of the Lough family, Lily figures out that her dreamboat isn't the Prince Charming she thought.
From Jarrod's absurd and completely unwarranted arrogance to the conversations about favorite animals and awkward doodles that festoon the closing credits, the spirit of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE hangs so heavily over Waititi's comedy that Jared Hess really should be credited somewhere. But while the film is hardly original (strange, given its calculatedly bizarre tone) and the soundtrack too cutesy even for a show like Gilmore Girls, it has a surprisingly dark edge. With an often very funny story line that eventually touches on parental disappointment and suicide, it's clear that, his debt to Hess and Wes Anderson notwithstanding, Waititi has learned a thing or two from fellow antipodean Jane Campion as well. leave a comment --Ken Fox