EDDIE THE EAGLE REVIEWED
“Eddie the Eagle” is the weird kind of biopic. The film takes about 15% of a true story and then makes up a film around it. Eddie the Eagle did exist and he traveled overseas to learn ski jumping. He was a persistent kid that found a loophole in British Olympic qualifications, but failed to really place in the final event. Taron Egerton makes his post “Kingsman” turn into something that plays bizarre. He plays the film like a cut scene from “Tropic Thunder”.
While his take was playing Eddie somewhere deep into the autism spectrum, it wasn’t true to the original athlete. This resulted in a deep shouting match after the film where I had to prove to my fellow moviegoer that Eddie the Eagle wasn’t really a slow adult. But, if you treated him as he was, I guess that it didn’t make his journey with Hugh Jackman make sense. Speaking of which, doesn’t it feel like Hugh Jackman shot out what they could pay him to do and then Christopher Walken was hired to finish in the rest? I have a hard time remembering the bizarre need to take two lead actors to work the same kinda role parallel to each other.
I appreciate a film that wants to entertain, warm the heart and damns the facts. Having a “biopic” that treats Germany as a united country in 1987/1988 is pleasantly comical. Having a film that treats late 80s England like the backdrop to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” is an entertaining effort to manipulate the audience. Hopefully, this signifies an effort to say damn the torpedos, let’s entertain the masses. Let’s just not treat this like a 30 on 30 documentary.
RELEASE STATS:
- Director: Dexter Fletcher
- Studio: 20th Century Fox
- Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins.
