Eddie The Eagle (15.)
Directed by Dexter Fletcher.
Starring Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Jo Hartley, Tim McInnerny, Keith Allen and Christopher Walken 106 mins.
If there is one thing the British excel at, it is plucky underdog stories. So it was inevitable that one day there would be an Eddie Edwards film; that it would feature Hugh Jackman much less so.
Jackman's role is the washed up, alcoholic American jumper who blew his potential and now, very reluctantly, finds himself training the guileless, clumsy, daft as a brush yet undoubtedly brave Edwards, the man who would compete in the Olympic ski jump after less than a year in the sport. His task is to get Eddie through to the Olympics in Calgary and find ways for him to beat the snobbish reluctance of the British Olympic committee (McInnerny) to have anything to do with him. His function in the film is to be the Yeah Right character: the lightening rod for all your incredulity and the film's tacit acknowledgment of all the liberties being taken in this “true story.” (Even so, it is a bit shocking how much of this is absolute bunkum.)
With Jackman taking one for the team, this leaves audiences free to really identify with, and believe in the title character. Egerton, star of Kingsman, isn't an obvious choice for the role but even if he doesn't quite capture the Chuckle-Brother-on-skis incongruity of the real Eddie, he is unexpectedly engaging. He plays him as a British comedy composite. He's improbably heroic like George Formby or Norman Wisdom but innocently sexless like Charles Hautrey. He's shocked and affronted when a lady comes on to him. Most of all he's relentlessly positive and upbeat like Peggy Ollerumshaw in Hi De Hi, who is going to be a yellow coat one day.
The actual Calgary Olympics were awash with feelgood underdog stories, and somewhere over the next mountain the Jamaican bobsleigh team, trained up by John Candy, was doing its Cool Runnings. Our British version is much superior: Egerton and and Jackman get you to buy into the silliness and shamelessness of the film. It's a con, a trick, a piece of slick manipulation and afterward you might feel a bit used, but you will be taken in.
Directed by Dexter Fletcher.
Starring Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Jo Hartley, Tim McInnerny, Keith Allen and Christopher Walken 106 mins.
If there is one thing the British excel at, it is plucky underdog stories. So it was inevitable that one day there would be an Eddie Edwards film; that it would feature Hugh Jackman much less so.
Jackman's role is the washed up, alcoholic American jumper who blew his potential and now, very reluctantly, finds himself training the guileless, clumsy, daft as a brush yet undoubtedly brave Edwards, the man who would compete in the Olympic ski jump after less than a year in the sport. His task is to get Eddie through to the Olympics in Calgary and find ways for him to beat the snobbish reluctance of the British Olympic committee (McInnerny) to have anything to do with him. His function in the film is to be the Yeah Right character: the lightening rod for all your incredulity and the film's tacit acknowledgment of all the liberties being taken in this “true story.” (Even so, it is a bit shocking how much of this is absolute bunkum.)
With Jackman taking one for the team, this leaves audiences free to really identify with, and believe in the title character. Egerton, star of Kingsman, isn't an obvious choice for the role but even if he doesn't quite capture the Chuckle-Brother-on-skis incongruity of the real Eddie, he is unexpectedly engaging. He plays him as a British comedy composite. He's improbably heroic like George Formby or Norman Wisdom but innocently sexless like Charles Hautrey. He's shocked and affronted when a lady comes on to him. Most of all he's relentlessly positive and upbeat like Peggy Ollerumshaw in Hi De Hi, who is going to be a yellow coat one day.
The actual Calgary Olympics were awash with feelgood underdog stories, and somewhere over the next mountain the Jamaican bobsleigh team, trained up by John Candy, was doing its Cool Runnings. Our British version is much superior: Egerton and and Jackman get you to buy into the silliness and shamelessness of the film. It's a con, a trick, a piece of slick manipulation and afterward you might feel a bit used, but you will be taken in.
