No one wins any medals inpete hammond review badge Eddie The Eagle. In fact, Michael Eddie Edwards, a young British man with an Olympic dream, managed to come in dead last in both ski-jumping events he entered at the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games. But as I say in my video review above, somehow he stole the show, and now the movie that has been made about this feat of just getting to compete will be stealing a lot of hearts — and laughs — along the way.
Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) stars as Edwards, an awkward young Brit who has dreamed of being an Olympian his entire life. Only problem is there really isn’t much of a sport he excels at, and when he does go out for Britain’s downhill ski team, he gets cut. With his dream looking like it has been shattered, he discovers that no Brit has made the Olympics as a ski jumper since 1929, so he takes that up as a novice hoping to make the select British team that way. He does, kinda by accident, and it’s off to Calgary. Along the way he is befriended by a “coach” played by Hugh Jackman who was once a promising ski jumper himself, but blew it and spends most of his days now drinking. But he does, for whatever reason, see in Edwards the spirit he lost and helps him achieve his dream. One particularly funny sequence has the coach comparing taking flight on a slope to having sex with Eddie’s favorite movie star, Bo Derek. In fact, there is a lot of humor throughout the film, which despite slightly racy scenes like that, is really a perfect family movie.
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