Eddie the Eagle (2016)
20th Century Fox
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Main Cast: Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman
A comedic sports biopic that is a bit too corny and hamfisted to really succeed. It is loosely (very loosely) based on the story of real-life ski jumper Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards, who was one of the most inspiring figures of the modern olympic games. Robert S. Borden wrote in 1976, “If voting could change anything it would be made illegal!” The story of Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team (both competed in the 1988 winter olympics) are kind of the sports corollary to that saying. Their presence resulted in rule changes to ban almost any others from following in their footsteps. If there was hope for anything good in the olympics, it was (and is) in athletes like Edwards, who came from a working class background and self-funded his training. Sadly, the olympics are a bastion of corruption — from the U.S. government pulling the term “olympics” out of the public domain (privatizing the commons), to out-of-control corporate sponsorships/bribery/consumerism, to bribes and scandals with the top committees, to financial chicanery and defrauding of public budgets for funding, to wasteful construction, … ahh, the list goes on. They might represent everything wrong with sports — though there are so many examples of dirty business in sports that there are many other contenders (FIFA, NFL, NCAA, etc., etc.!). The world would be a better place without them all, frankly.
I still remember the real-life Eddie the Eagle jumping in the olympics. I was in a bar or restaurant of some sort with my family. Everyone in the place watched the TV to see Eddie the Eagle jump.
Anyway, this film is dumb but the story of the real-life Eddie the Eagle remains a great thumb in the eye of elitist twats who run the world (for now).