Eddie the Eagle is charming. It’s assured–great script from Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton–and a wonderful sense of time and place (eighties UK and Europe, then Canada) from director Fletcher. Fletcher’s got some problems I’ll get to in a bit but Eddie’s got a phenomenal feel. It’s a deft homage to eighties popular filmmaking, with an ecstatic synthesizer-ish score from Matthew Margeson. It’s also extremely self-aware of how films have changed since then. Fletcher’s use of sports montage and one-liners–he’s a competent director, but he has a hard time with the first act.
Eddie’s an inspiring, true story movie. It’s about this British guy (Eddie) who, while not an athlete, ended up in the Olympics. I’d never heard of it because… you know, sports. Taron Egerton is the lead, Hugh Jackman is his trainer. Jo Hartley and Keith Allen are his parents. All of them give great performances. Jackman’s giving a really strong movie star performance. Hartley and Allen have to be comic relief but also entirely human and relatable. Egerton’s performance is thoughtful and deliberate. He’s playing a colorful (in reality) person and he gets past the color.
In some ways, Eddie makes fun of its own Britishness to get by. It’s well-produced Britishness, but there’s a wink about it all. It’s oddly appropriate, as the action moves to Germany, because it orients the audience quite comfortably. We’re in the British perspective, we’re looking in on the European, just like Egerton would be if the character had time to do anything but ski jump.
The ski jumping is where Fletcher gets into his most trouble. He’s better directing the actors than he is shooting scenes of the actors, but that problem is far less significant. Eddie is about the sport of ski jumping; it seems like it should be an important thing to show. Fletcher botches most of it. He and cinematographer George Richmond love the scale of the film–the mountains, the mountain ski villages, the ski jumps–and they convey it well. There’s just nothing in the filmmaking when it comes to the jumps. They get better, but they get better because they’re less ambitious (mostly just close-ups on Egerton) and the audience is identifying with Egerton more and more throughout the runtime.
Fletcher, Macaulay, Kelton, Egerton, Jackman, everyone–Margeson, he needs another call out–they do strong work. Fletcher’s inability as an “action” director aside, he is the one who makes the film so frequently rewarding. Eddie the Eagle’s really good.
And awesome cameos from Jim Broadbent and Christopher Walken.
★★★
CREDITS
Directed by Dexter Fletcher; screenplay by Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton, based on a story by Kelton; director of photography, George Richmond; edited by Martin Walsh; music by Matthew Margeson; production designer, Mike Gunn; produced by Adam Bohling, Rupert Maconick, David Reid, Valerie Van Galder and Matthew Vaughn; released by 20th Century Fox.
Starring Taron Egerton (Eddie Edwards), Hugh Jackman (Bronson Peary), Jo Hartley (Janette), Keith Allen (Terry), Iris Berben (Petra), Rune Temte (Bjørn), Tim McInnerny (Dustin Target), Jim Broadbent (BBC Commentator) and Christopher Walken (Warren Sharp).
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