Eddie the Eagle Review

Fresh from playing a rough-and-ready secret agent in Kingsman, Taron Egerton is all grimaces and gurns as Eddie, a youngster determined to make his Olympic dream a reality, in spite of the fact that – during his formative years at least – he had very little in the way of sporting prowess.

Having tried and failed at a several other sports, skiing became his obsession, and through a combination of hard work and determination, Eddie narrowly missed out on GB’s downhill team. Un-phased, Edwards instead took to the air, making it his mission to become Great Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper.

The film then takes the greatest of those liberties, packing Eddie off to a German training camp, and teaming him with an entirely fictional trainer called Bronson Peary. As played by Hugh Jackman, Peary was once the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, womanising bad boy of the slopes. Now however, he spends his days ploughing snow and his nights at the bottom of a bottle.

As sports movies dictate, when Bronson meets Eddie he’s unimpressed, but, like Mickey and Mr. Miyagi before him, he eventually warms to the plucky upstart, agreeing to train him in the ways of “the jumping paradox” and proving to his apprentice – mercifully not literally – that taking off and landing is a lot like having sex.

Cue multiple monatges as Eddie learns to jump from ever greater heights, earns his ‘Eagle’ nickname thanks to some poorly choreographed celebrations, and endeavours to avoid bringing the sport into disrepute as the worst athlete in Olympic history.

Drama is added to the mix courtesy of three sources: Great Britain’s Select Committee who claim Edwards ‘isn’t Olympic material,’ his team-mates and the rarely clothed Scandinavian jumpers who view him as a joke, and his Dad, who wants Eddie to give it all up and join the family’s plastering business.

Taron Egerton as Eddie and Hugh Jackman as his trainer.

These conflicts largely work, making it impossible not to root for ‘The Eagle’ as his big Olympic jump approaches. Where the film is less successful, however, is in trying to give Jackman’s character a similarly heroic journey, which comes courtesy of his own complicated relationship with a former coach, played by Christopher Walken.

This sub-plot is shoe-horned in and given so to little time to develop that it completely fails to ring true. It’s the film’s one true misstep however, with director Dexter Fletcher – working from a script by Simon Kelton and Sean Macaulay – taking a somewhat predictable story and filling it with oomph, energy and charm.

Making an exciting movie about a sport that involves repeatedly skiing down the same slope can’t have been easy, but Fletcher manages it, and between Wild Bill, Sunshine on Leith and this, the actor-turned-director is now three-for-three.

He’s helped by a likeable lead performance from Egerton, who grates a little early on in proceedings, but eventually wins you over by expertly balancing Eddie’s innocence and optimism with his bravery and steely-eyed determination.

The music also goes a long way to filling the film with that feel-good factor, Matthew Margeson’s cracking synth score complemented by a soundtrack that includes Van Halen, Hall & Oats, Deacon Blue, and most definitely not Eddie’s abominable hit.