3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for mildly suggestive material and partial nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.26.16
Winning isn’t everything.
Sometimes merely participating,
and doing your best, is enough. More than enough.
We tend to forget, after the
increasingly overblown sequels, that in his 1976 film debut, Sylvester
Stallone’s Rocky Balboa merely wanted to “go the distance.” And that’s all he
did, which is — in great part — what makes that film such an endearing classic.
British director Dexter
Fletcher’s charming Eddie the Eagle is cut from the same cloth. This
whimsical underdog saga is fueled by an engaging performance from Taron
Egerton, superbly cast as Michael “Eddie” Edwards, the wannabe British
ski-jumper who made such an improbable — and improbably triumphant — showing at
the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.
An opening statement is careful
to note that this big-screen account of Edwards’ exploits is “inspired” by
actual events, which allows scripters Simon Kelton and Sean Macaulay to play
fast and loose with a few details. They’re careful to retain the essential
broad strokes that brought Edwards to Calgary, and of course his performance at
the Olympics is a matter of record (and can be viewed in any number of YouTube
videos).
But various supporting characters
have been conflated or invented outright, in the manner we’d expect from a
crowd-pleasing, feel-good movie. That’s less of an issue in this particular
case, as such liberties merely augment the myth-making that put Edwards in the history
books. Somehow, it feels appropriate.
Besides which, when the result is
this enjoyable, it’s hard to complain.
We meet young Eddie as the
bespectacled only child of working-class Cheltenham parents Janette (Jo
Hartley) and Terry (Keith Allen), the latter a construction plasterer by trade.
Despite poor vision, worse knees — the boy is shackled into a leg brace — and
an utter lack of coordination, Eddie lives and breathes a foolish notion of
growing up to become an Olympian.
Fletcher brings us through
Eddie’s childhood with a brief prologue that highlights the boy’s stubborn
pluck, much to the delight of his doting mother, and the exasperation of his
aggrieved father. Hartley and Allen are delightful: She’s the mum we’d all love
to have, while Allen — all bluster and bluff — makes ample use of his busy
background as a popular character actor.
And how can we not adore a child
who believes that holding his breath underwater for not quite a minute will
qualify for some obscure Olympic event?
Having achieved maturity — in
years, if little else — Eddie (now played by Egerton) has lost none of his
helpless, hopeless dweebishness. But he seems wholly unaware of what a
ludicrous figure he cuts ... or, to be more precise, he’s fully aware of his
shortcomings, but simply doesn’t care. He’s driven solely by inflexible
perseverance and an unyielding belief in himself.
Thus, when he impulsively decides
to embrace skiing as his sport of choice — despite having absolutely no experience
— his parents see this as merely another in a long line of futile endeavors.
And, as it happens, Eddie’s enthusiasm is far from enough to win him a place on
the British ski team.
He therefore switches gears, to
ski jumping ... because of stumbling upon an unexpected advantage. Since Great
Britain doesn’t have a ski jumping team, Eddie need only make one qualifying
70-meter jump, in order to represent his country at the Calgary Winter Olympics
... as a “team” of one.
Cue his dogged pursuit of the
impossible dream. Despite being too old, too heavy and utterly inexperienced.
(It’s important to recognize that
this film overplays Eddie’s lack of coordination; the real-life Edwards was a
much better skier than we’re led to believe here.)
Much of what follows is accurate:
amazingly, unbelievably so. As a wholly unfunded athlete, Eddie really did
borrow the family van in order to drive around Europe in pursuit of a
qualifying jump; he really did sleep rough, and take on various odd jobs just
to feed himself.
But the unlikely booster in this
cinematic Eddie’s saga is the stuff of big-screen artifice. Hugh Jackman
co-stars as Bronson Peary, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking American and
tarnished former ski-jumper now consigned to smoothing the snow at a German training
and practice facility. Peary is an amalgam of the many actual coaches the
real-world Eddie obtained and lost during his eccentric efforts at training,
and it’s a “movie star” role made for Jackman.
At first only annoyed by this
brash kid who doesn’t even understand the dangers of the sport he’s pursuing,
Peary gradually comes around, inevitably won over by Eddie’s bright-eyed doggedness.
Jackman wears his part well, with just the right blend of exasperation and,
soon enough, almost startling respect. We see it in Jackman’s eyes: At the end
of the day, Peary can’t turn his back on somebody with so much can-do spirit
... even if he does inhabit a can’t-do body.
Jackman’s big-screen charisma
notwithstanding, the film belongs to Egerton. His face alone is to die for:
almost cross-eyed due to poor vision, and invariably marked by a turned-down
grimace of a smile that is the spitting image of the actual Edwards’
weird-looking grin. The impersonation is almost spooky; Egerton looks, acts and
moves a lot like Edwards, as revealed by the archive photos that unspool
alongside the film’s closing credits.
Mostly, though, Egerton wins us
over with his giddy, goofy eagerness: his graceless physicality becomes utterly
irresistible. He’s the klutz we can’t help adoring.
It’s quite a switch from the
tough street kid-turned-suave secret agent in 2014’s Kingsman. That film was
directed by Matthew Vaughn, who serves here as co-producer.
The always reliable Jim Broadbent
pops up as an Olympic sportscaster who indulges in this film’s cutest — and
most predictable — one-liner. Tim McInnerny earns our loathing as a boorish
British Olympics official who views Eddie as a loathsome pest likely to make a
mockery of the games. Rune Temte is hilarious as a condescending Norwegian
coach.
Christopher Walken briefly
appears as a veteran ski jumping coach who has “history” with Peary, in an
underdeveloped subplot that doesn’t really go anywhere until a fairy-tale
climax that’s rather too Pollyanna-ish, even under these circumstances.
The unabashed sentimentality of
Fletcher’s approach, along with the “unlikely underdog” storyline, evokes
pleasant memories of James Corden’s depiction of Paul Potts’ equally
far-fetched determination to become an opera singer, in 2013’s One Chance. There’s just no question that the British have a knack for such films.
Then, too, movie fans are apt to
recall 1993’s Cool Runnings, and its fact-based (and hilarious) depiction of
the equally improbable Jamaican bobsled team that qualified for the same Winter
Olympics. (Obviously, Calgary was the place to be in 1988.) Vaughn was
similarly inspired; if the press notes are to be believed, he revived
long-dormant plans for Eddie the Eagle after recently watching Cool
Runnings with his children.
Whatever the catalyst, the
results are delightful. Eddie the Eagle is both an entertaining film and an
equally important reminder of Pierre de Coubertin’s timeless quote: “The most
important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning, but taking part; the
essential thing in life is not conquering, but fighting well.”
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