Eddie the Eagle ***½ (2016, Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Keith Allen, Jo Hartley, Tim McInnerny, Iris Berben, Christopher Walken) – Movie Review

Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman are a fun double act in this entertaining, thoroughly enjoyable feel-good movie about Michael ‘Eddie’ Edwards, the unlikely, courageous British ski-jumper and the reluctant, charismatic coach Bronson Peary who trains him for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. This is the story of the plasterer from Cheltenham who becomes a go-for-it international superstar, with the help of his daring and offbeat charm.

Eddie the Eagle is inspired by true events, which turns out that they’ve made a lot of it up, which is annoying when you learn this as you feel a bit duped. It turns out that the movie’s alcoholic ex-jumper Peary is an entirely fictional creation. How irritating is that? And most everything else we see has been reinvented for the film. On the other hand, as Hitchcock said, ‘it’s only a movie’, and it’s a fun and funny one, very traditional, manipulative and old-fashioned, but very welcome for its warm heart and good spirit for all that.

It’s directed by Dexter Fletcher. You expect something a lot edgier and more alternative from him, but what you get it a mass-market, middle-of-the-road crowd pleaser. And, as such, he does a real good job of it, reviving a stale formula with much zest. It’s not a gold medallist perhaps, but certainly a bronze, maybe ever a silver.

The cynical could say that Egerton is channelling Rodney from Only Fools and Horses and old Norman Wisdom films in a slack star character turn, and that Jackman is coasting on his own charisma. But that, of course, would be unkind. Hey, they’re likeable, like the movie.

Also making a strong impression in the movie are Keith Allen and Jo Hartley as Eddie’s plasterer dad Terry, who constantly ridicules his son, and his doting mum Janette [in reality the parents both supported Eddie]; Tim McInnerny as the snotty old duffer British Olympics Committee boss Dustin Target; Iris Berben as Petra, the German bar owner who befriends Eddie; and Christopher Walken as legendary old coach Warren Sharp.

As written by Simon Kelton and Sean Macaulay, all these roles are caricatures and they are played in that complaisant sit-com sort of way that, like the film, may be untruthful, but get the laughs. I’m sad to say that Walken’s cameo is a shade slack, but of course he still shows effortless charisma.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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