If you’ve been around long enough and pay attention to all of the Olympic hoo-raw, you would probably recall an unusual event in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, like big rounds of applause for a guy on the British ski jumping team who came in dead last, by a large margin. That guy was Micheal Edwards (Taron Egerton), an awkward, less than thin guy with coke-bottle glasses and a cheerful, upbeat attitude that made him a crowd favorite. Nicknamed Eddie The Eagle, this guy provides the main character in this upbeat, saccharine film. At the time, Britain had not even had a ski jumping team since the 1920’s when the sport was decidedly more primitive. Edwards was a miserable jumper who, with some coaching, managed to qualify for the team using the 1920’s standards. He only had to jump 60 meters (the 1920’s standard), in spite of the fact that contemporary jumpers were jumping 90 meters. Edwards lacked the physique, training or experience to be a good jumper, but he did have relentless determination and an extroverted, self promoting attitude that won millions of fans for a while. Eddie the Eagle, the movie, is a fictionalization of that event.
To appreciate this film, you have to go in, knowing that it’s going to be an inspiration that should make you come out happy and teary. After all, the most unlikely of schlubs, with enough desire, pluck and determination can get to the Olympics..right? In this story, we see Eddie, deciding that he wants to transcend his father’s wish that he join in his multi-generational family occupation of wall plasterer. Eddie wants to fly. He gets his chance with some reluctant coaching from a burned out former jumper, Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman and all of his muscles), who is running the machinery that grooms the ski slope. Peary is alcoholic, cynical and insulting, but Eddie is so cheerful that Peary can’t help being won over to Eddie’s side.
I find it difficult to review a movie like this. It’s like a religious movie in that it has a desired emotional outcome, it wants you to leave with a cheerful mood, thinking that Eddie is a hero. You are supposed to feel good when it’s over. It does that, as long as you can suspend your disbelief. I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade if this sort of fare makes them feel good about life, but, as a skeptic, I usually need to do some fact checking, so when I did, I found that the movie made some fictional twists from fact, all in the name of making me come feeling like anybody can do anything with enough pluck and desire. There’s nothing wrong with that message exactly, but I did feel used.
Eddie was directed by British director Dexter Fletcher; I have not seen any of his other films. Aside from Hugh Jackman and a brief cameo from Christopher Walken, I am not familiar with any of the other actors in the film, but all of them do a creditable job in their roles. The mechanics of story telling, music (a lot of 80’s songs with glassy sounding synths) and cinematography are all done reasonably well, but nothing here is remarkable. Taron Egerton plays the role of Eddie quite likably; he spends the movie conveying an innocent and guileless determination, without a mean bone in his body. If you like this sort of movie, and think that there are not enough happy stories in the world, you will probably enjoy this. There were some people coming out of the theater, proclaiming “Greatest Movie Ever”, but I have to say that in my opinion, it was mainly a little better than made-for-TV fare. I didn’t dislike it, I wish it were all true, but I don’t think it will be much more than a footnote in movie history. Like its religious cousins, once we leave the building and dab our tears, life will go on as usual. I found Eddie to be mainly a showboat, not nearly the inspiration he would have been if he had risen from his humble beginnings to really do the work and master the sport he exploited. In spite of his likability, he WAS a sham, only a superficial hero and not a good athlete. As a movie, it was made well, but only hits a middle mark for me.
