by RILEY GOLDEN/Editorial Assistant
Every doubt he has ever had builds up in his head as Michael Eddie Edwards prepares to make the jump of his life.
Eddie Edwards, better known as “Eddie the Eagle,” was the first skier to represent Great Britain in Ski Jumping in the 1988 Olympics.
The movie “Eddie the Eagle,” starts out showing the early years of Edwards’ life. He has a brace on one of his legs, though it is never really mentioned why his leg was like that. He eventually gains full use of it.
Edwards learns how to ski and eventually gets very good at it. He is good enough to make the British Olympic team, but is later cut in the time leading up to the Olympics. Edwards is determined to compete in the Olympics any way he can, so he starts taking up ski jumping since there hasn’t been a British team in many years.
Though a cute movie and a good family flick, it kind of drags throughout the whole thing. The movie runs less than two hours, but I found myself asking how long the movie had lasted, because it felt like a two-hour-plus movie. There are a few chuckles here and there, and Taron Egerton not only looks similar to the real Eddie Edwards, he does a good job at portraying him as goofy and fun, especially with a particularly cheesie script.
Although Hugh Jackman was decent in the film, he plays someone completely fictional. It makes it seem like he was just added to draw audiences in more, because the entire movie was about the real Edwards and his fictional coach.
After a lot of hard work with his fictional, alcoholic coach, Edwards lands his first jump and later lands the current minimum distance to qualify, only to find out that the distance was changed by the rule makers.
His coach tries to convince him to wait until the next year to train and get better, but he refuses and decides to jump anyway. Edwards becomes popular due to his charm and being a loveable underdog. When he lands his first jump at the Olympics, which wouldn’t have even gotten him qualified, Edwards goes crazy, dancing for the crowd because he just set a British record.
Having never jumped from the tallest jump, Edwards decides he doesn’t want to be taken as a one-act joke any more. So he goes for the larger jump, which could literally get him killed or paralyzed.
Edwards’ father never supported what he was doing, but the film shows him and Edwards’ mother watching from their hometown, as well as the fictional coach watching from a bar. At the very end, the movie really drags even more. The tempo slows a lot, and there’s a huge build up leading to the final jump.
The story of Edwards is a fun, tear-jerking movie for the whole family. Although it is slightly boring, I give “Eddie the Eagle” 3 out of 5 starts.
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