I’ve wanted to be an Olympian for as long as I knew what the Olympics was. When I was a teen, my father came up with a plan … the modern pentathlon – running, shooting, swimming, fencing, riding. He figured, “why, you already have two of the disciplines down (running, swimming); all you have to do is adopt three more. No problem.” My dad often has crappy ideas; I might have mentioned this once or twice. Sure, I can run and I can swim and I’m reasonably skilled at both. At the time, however, I’d ridden horseback exactly once and never held a blade or firearm in my life (those three things still remain true, btw). The discounting of the skill it takes to learn how to ride, shoot and fence is criminal. But the idea was exactly the same as today’s movie: want the Olympics? Well, here’s your in – you find an event your country doesn’t participate in, you meet the insanely low threshold for inclusiveness, then you go to the Olympics and get dryhumped in head-to-head competition by real athletes who know what they’re doing and have worked much harder than you at it, but hey! Olympics.
What my dad didn’t quite get was that I didn’t want to go the Olympics just to be part of the pageantry. I wanted to be part of the pageantry after having earned the right to be there. His plan was cheating the system. Difference between myself and Eddie Edwards (Tom Costello Jr., Jack Costello, and mostly Taron Egerton) is that, for me, cheating the system to achieve my dream wasn’t more important than the dream itself. Eddie the Eagle had no more right to be an Olympian than I had. That said, this biopic was kinda fun.
Eddie is portrayed a daft, knee-braced and oft bullied child. Even without the knee-brace and in his adulthood, he strikes you as the kind of guy who gets sand kicked in his face — even when he’s not at the beach. But Eddie dreams about being an Olympian and nothing is going to stop him – not daftness, limited skills, money, opportunity, nothing. I’m not sure the movie ever explores why Eddie wants to be an Olympian. It just announces that he does.
As a boy, Eddie discovers he has a far better chance at being an Olympian in the winter games than the summer games. Hmmm, already trying to job the system, are we? Now, to be fair, the geeky Eddie does become a fair skier, winning several junior events and qualifying for the English skiing trials. No, it isn’t exactly the Austrian downhill team, but still, the kid showed skills enough to make the trials … where if this biography is true, he embarrassed himself and the team in the introduction process and was summarily dismissed from the competition.
In his moment of despair, Eddie discovers ski jumping – a sport of little perceived skill (don’t fool yourself, it takes a great deal) and, even better, almost no requirements because England doesn’t field a ski jumping team. Eddie’s father (Keith Allen) wants Eddie to plaster like dear old dad. With Eddie’s downhill chances fully faceplanted, dad feels the path is cleared for blue-collar Eddie. Mom (Jo Hartley), however, is an enabler and lets Eddie skip off to Germany to learn ski jumping. This is 1987. The man has never ski-jumped before. While he is decent on skis, he has no training, no natural talent for the sport, no place to live, no money to live on and no one to guide his idiocy. And the Calgary Olympics are in the winter of the following year.
Luckily, Hugh Jackman is there to be American. Somebody has to drink to excess, deny Eddie, then take pity on him, right? And he supplies an awesome Dirty Dancing moment while teaching Eddie the craft. I swear, lifting a man like Patrick Swayze does Jennifer Grey? That might be the most impressive part of the film. Eddie the Eagle glides over the bullshit nature of getting the
unqualified novice to the Olympics; it also paints seasoned veterans as bad guys, which is criminal in its own right – here are guys who have trained their entire lives to qualify for the Olympics v. one guy who has never jumped before and all the latter has to do, essentially, is cleanly land one 70m jump to get an Olympic ticket punched … and the former are the villains? C’mon. However, the film never glides over the awesome nature of the task at hand. Getting the nerve to jump a 70m run and landing it cleanly takes a level of fearlessness and skill unattainable by most humans. On at least one level of talent, Eddie is certainly an Olympian.
At the end of the day, I’m of mixed feelings about Eddie – yes, I feel he cheated the system. I think there are, literally, thousands of better, more deserving ski jumpers unable to go to the Olympics simply because they were born Finnish or German or something else. On the other hand, there’s no question that Eddie Edwards truly embodied the spirit of the Olympics. He didn’t have an axe or an ego to grind; he just wanted to be part of select crowd. There was nobody more excited to be an Olympian and perhaps that’s what it’s all about. Of course, if that were the only criteria, each games would take years to run, be virtually unwatchable, and include an Everest of athletic atrocity. I am happy for Eddie the Eagle and at the same hope he never happens again.
♪Chump keeps of smashin’, smashin’ smashin’
Into a stupor
Punk makes his reel, reel, reel
Into a blooper
Don’t want to crash like this Eagle
To the ice
Crash like this Eagle
Landing on skis would be nice
Don’t to crash like this Eagle
Let me be
Think I’ll stick to the clubhouse♫
Rated PG-13, 106 Minutes
D: Dexter Fletcher
W: Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton
Genre: Endearingly cheating the system
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Eddie the Eagle
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Dedicated athletes
♪ Parody inspired by “Fly Like an Eagle”
