Eddie The Eagle – The true story of the ultimate underdog sporting hero in the feel good film of the year.
Nutshell – The ultimate loser makes good. The tale of the legendary British ski-jumper who self funded, borrowed gear and fought his way against incredible odds to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics and charmed the entire world as a result. It is a story of a dreamer made good and of perseverance with little help in the most dangerous and scary of sports – it is the ultimate tale of British spunk with an 80’s soundtrack and new songs by the biggest artists of that decade and boy is it great fun as Eddie steals the whole event from all the medal winners, stars and even the Jamaican cool running bobsleigh team that year.
Time – 106 mins (and not a minute is wasted); Certificate – PG
Tagline – “Inspired by a dream come true” and “Win or lose, always aim high”
THE GAY UK FACTOR – Hugh Jackman as Eddie’s trainer in the tightest jeans the world has ever seen and a million gratuitous ass shots to keep your loins happy between the jumps and when he bends over…
Cast – Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman’s left butt cheek, Hugh Jackman’s right butt cheek, Tim (Blackadder) McInnery, Keith (Vindaloo) Allen who seems obsessed by It’s A Knockout here, Jim (Moulin Rouge) Broadbent and Christopher (Deerhunter) Walken all overacting like good un’s.
Key Player – Taron Egerton who is rapidly becoming the UK’s fastest rising star and heading to Tom Hardy type levels of fame. We loved him in Kingsman last year and Legend the story of the Krays, but here he just is Eddie. You don’t even see him as he simply inhabits Eddie’s skin and looks just like him. Taron, makes you will him to achieve his goals as much as the original sports star did. He even sings the closing song ‘Thrill Me‘ alongside 80’s pop legends OMD before seasoned stage singer Jackman joins in as a trio. Next up for Egerton is Robin Hood:Origins.
Budget – $23 million. A flawed release in the States where it suffered alongside Legend, Dad’s Army, Suffragette and The Lady In The Van as being too British (We need another Full Monty/Four Weddings/Chariots Of Fire crossover soon). So it has only made $25 million to date in profit and starting to soar like a big American bird. Beginning to be a very big hit in the UK and getting traction overseas so it’s the yanks loss and will probably break it big there on DVD and when it is satellite streamed. It has exactly the same tone as Cool Runnings so will be on TV the world over on public holidays for decades to come.
Best Bit – 95 mins; When Eddie has to make a life changing jump with the eyes and hope of the entire world on him, only trouble is he is massively out of his depth and heading for the biggest fall the world has ever seen and will he even go through with it ?
Worst Bit – 45 mins; When the second set of bad guys after the Olympic selectors have done their worst, his arrogant UK public school team mates pick on poor Eddie with an initiation ritual which ends in him missing the opening ceremony just when you are willing him to achieve his lifelong dreams and ambition and have the time of his life.
Little Secret – Last year Eddie told the BBC that at least 85% of the movie was going to be made up. He had many trainers not just the one shown here played by Jackman, he was a ski instructor in Italy long before he tried out for the UK ski team regularly doing jumps of 40 metres or so therefore not such a novice to ski’s and jumping. None of the film was shot in Canada. All the ski jump shots were shot in Austria obviously for budgetary location reasons. He didn’t train at Garmisch in the Alps as shown here but in Lake Placid in the States so not so much a biopic as an inspired by – maybe the other candidates for the main role Steve Coogan and Rupert Grint believed more in accuracy but who cares.
Movie Mistake – Not too many so congrats to all – but his parents need to check their VHS video collection as whilst watching Eddie at the 1988 finals it contains many movies which had not been released then such as Michael Douglas’s Black Rain and Clint’s In The Line Of Fire which debuted 5 years later. Their TV may need checking too, as his dad wanting to switch over to It’s a Knock Out would have trouble – as the show finished six years earlier with the exception of the ‘It’s A Royal Knockout‘ featuring Princess Anne, Prince Edward & Cliff Richard! That was a year earlier too. As for their music collection they must have good connections with the Deacon Blue lads as Real Gone Kid wasn’t recorded and released at that time.
Awards – This type of film is more in the market of making people happy and getting bums on seats from people who rarely visit the cinema so no medals required after all Eddie didn’t get one but is still doing pretty well for himself 28 years on – see this years series of The Jump on Channel 4.
Further Viewing – Cool Runnings, Kingsman:The Secret Service, Rocky, Miracle, Seabiscuit, The Bad News Bears, The Mighty Ducks, Moneyball, Kingpin, Happy Gilmore, Hoosiers and a hundred other triumph over adversity sports films.
Any Good – Yes, yes and yes. If you don’t enjoy this you may not have a pulse. Okay it is formulaic and you know the outcome before you even enter the theatre – like most biopics, but that didn’t spoil Titanic did it?
This film is so light it could fly away at any moment and won’t change your life but as it is so plain happy with itself it will just make you feel great for a couple of hour. In a world of ISIS, Refugees, Donald Trump, North Korea and gay rights being trampled under foot in Russia and Uganda, then that is not a bad thing at all.
Rating 9/100 (9th out of the last 100 films reviewed with 1 being Gay UK filmatic ejaculatery heaven and 100 being as much fun as being a woman in a certain Hollywood actor’s martial bed allegedly
