(2006) Much in the manner of Napoleon Dynamite, New Zealand director/writer Taika Wailiti's wacky film explores the stunted lives and awkward loves of young losers. These are adults who behave like junior-high kids.

Working behind the cash register at the Meaty Boy fast-food restaurant, nebbish Lily McKennon (Loren Horsley, also co-writer) gets laid off in a hat lottery, only to discover later that her name was on every slip of paper. She and her dorky brother Damon (Joel Tobeck), a cartoonist, live in their deceased parents' house. On her last day at work she gives Jarrod Ruiz (Jemaine Clement), a young man on whom she has a crush with a lip mole similar to hers, extra fries for free with his order; he gives her an invitation for another female employee to come to his animal-costume party.

When the other girl shows no interest in going, Lily (in a homemade costume of a shark) and Damon (a tarantula) show up instead. The highlight of the party is the annual video Fightman competition: Lily, calling herself "Dangerous Person," qualifies to take on last year's champion, Eagle Lord (Jarrod), by beating all the other lame doofuses. Gooey-eyed she then lets him defeat her video character.

Jarrod the hero-king of all his self-imaginings tells Lily the orphan that his mother was killed by a cow, which is why he can't eat beef, and his brother died trying to save a kid from a fire at school. In his bedroom he asks, "Do you want to kiss?" "Yup," she answers. "On the lips?" "Yup." "Do you want to have sex?" he asks. "Yup." Afterward Jarrod calls someone on the phone to blurt out an obscenity.

Lily stops by Screen Blasterz to see Jarrod at work where he announces he has a mission to kill his high-school nemesis, Eric Elisi, back in his hometown. However, he has no means of transportation, complaining that the bus would take too long. Damon agrees to Lily's request to drive them to Jarrod's hometown, leaving them both with Jarrod's dad, who sits in a wheelchair, his sister Nancy and her husband, Nancy's husband's brother, and Jarrod's daughter.

Jarrod takes Lily to meet his friend Mason, a computer geek, who wears a T-shirt displaying "Bugger!" At dinner Jarrod proclaims to his family that he's going to "restore honor to the family name." In explaining his daughter's existence, he asks Lily how many boyfriends she's had. Four she says: "Sam, Sam, and another Sam, and Raymond."

Soon after he informs her, "I have to dump you." "Okay," replies the ever complacent Lily. Life's become too complicated and he needs to be alone, though he begins spending time with another girl Tracy when he's not training for combat. Unable to leave for another three days when the bus makes its once-a-week stop, Lily turns down Mason's offer to date her. Having found a heart-shaped stone earlier, she hurls it into the air at the shore, knocking a seagull out of the sky.

Jarrod's daughter shows Lily where Jarrod's brother had leaped off a cliff to his death; Jarrod's father, who can walk when he feels like getting out of the wheelchair, says that his wife left him for Australia to be a lesbian. Having written Eric a letter in advance of his return home, Jarrod phones the bully who had ruined his life with a challenge to meet in the playground to get his butt kicked.

Animation brings together a rotten apple with a bite out of it Jarrod had tossed out the car window into the river and an apple core Lily had tossed away.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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