Eddie the Eagle (2016)
With the Olympic Games in full swing I thought it would be a good idea to check out a sports film set during the Winter Olympic Games (actually, the truth is Eddie the Eagle was just recently released on DVD and the Olympics had nothing to do with me watching the film). In England, the Winter Olympics aren’t quite as popular as the summer Olympics (less exposure, less chance to win medals being the major reasons) but in the 1988 Calgary Olympics no-hoper Eddie Edwards captured the public’s imagination and hearts.
Dexter Fletcher’s Eddie the Eagle is best described as a crowd pleader, it plays fast and loose with the facts for dramatic purposes, which is strange as the true sporting stories are normally the best. Eddie the Eagle shows why, despite the naysayers, sport does matter, if winning or even competing means so much to someone then it quite clearly does matter. Eddie the Eagle makes for likable character (Taron Egerton’s performance is pretty good) and it’s almost impossible not to become fully engaged in Eddie’s quest to compete at the Olympic games. It’s a heart warming, crowd pleaser that pretty much ticks every box a sports biopic needs to tick. It’s perhaps a little overly sentimental and straightforward but it’s easy to wave aside those petty criticisms.
