Eddie the Eagle

Eddie the Eagle is a cliché sports movie, but the good kind of cliché, like your mom’s cookie recipe she makes over and over. The movie’s tropes are warmly familiar. The story is based on Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards (Taron Egerton), a British skier who teaches himself to be a ski jumper after failing to make the British Olympic team. At the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, Canada, Edwards became the first British Olympic ski jumper ever and an underdog favorite. Hugh Jackman stars as Eddie’s coach, Bronson Peary, a washed-up American ski jumper and alcoholic who is the foil to Eddie’s pure heart and milk-drinking habit.

Yes, we have the typical sports movie “training” montages, where our hero goes from klutz to Olympian under Bronson’s tutelage. Yes, a British Olympic committee member tells Eddie, “You aren’t Olympic material,” and Eddie’s blue-collar dad says, “You’re not an athlete,” and Eddie says he will “prove them all wrong.” The movie is not breaking new ground. But Eddie is a lovable main character, a lonely outsider whose glasses fog up on the slopes.

The real Eddie was popular in 1988 because he was an everyman with no money who barely made it to the Olympics. He wore hand-me-down ski boots in an event designed for elite athletes who trained since they were toddlers.

The movie is rated PG-13 for some inappropriate moments: Bronson, while training Eddie, compares ski jumping to sex in a sort of When Harry Met Sally diner scene. Bronson also drinks constantly, though part of his character’s development involves addressing his alcoholism. In another scene, Eddie walks into a sauna that turns out to be full of nude Scandinavian ski jumpers, with strategically placed camera shots.

The 1988 Winter Olympics hosted another memorable underdog story about the Jamaican bobsled team, the subject of the 1993 film Cool Runnings. In a subtle acknowledgment of the parallels, a radio in Bronson’s cabin plays a news bulletin about the Jamaican team. Eddie is not the first underdog sports movie, but it’s a fun ride down the slopes.