The natural point of comparison for Eddie the Eagle is Cool Runnings, the 1993 movie about the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. Well, I actually haven’t seen Cool Runnings — except for the epic slow clap sequence, which I’ve watched countless times — so I may be the only reviewer who came to Eddie the Eagle never having before seen a movie about underdog athletes at the Calgary Games, where sympathy for true amateurs was apparently at its zenith.

Eddie the Eagle amounts to 105 minutes of shade thrown at the professionalization of the Olympics — complete with repeated reference to the statement by Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Games (I could definitely not have told you that before seeing Eddie), that “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

The eponymous flapper is Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, the first athlete to compete as an Olympic ski jumper for Great Britain. He squeaked in by virtue of having no active competition for the slot, and because of relatively lax minimum requirements for Olympic participation in the sport — requirements that were subsequently tightened up in direct response to the Eagle’s flight.

Eddie the Eagle refrains from sharing that downer with us, and there are other aspects of Edwards’s remarkable career that are omitted — notably, a stint as a stunt jumper who could clear ten cars on skis prior to his Olympic run. The film also omits the financial considerations that prompted Edwards’s shift from a successful (but not Olympic-level successful) career as a downhill skier: it was cheaper to climb a ski jump than to buy a lift ticket, an important consideration for the working-class Brit.

An even bigger departure from reality is the completely imaginary character of Bronson Peary, the alcoholic American ski-jump vet who comes out of retirement to become Edwards’s coach. Peary is played by Hugh Jackman — implausibly slim and trim, though he looks great flicking a cigarette out of his mouth as he takes off on a sauced ski jump — while Edwards himself is played, chin first, by Taron Egerton.

In the end, the movie is only “about 10% accurate,” says Edwards himself. It’s all worth it, though, because the fictional mentoring creates an opportunity for Christopher Walken to saunter in — his belt somewhere in the vicinity of his nipples — as the legendary coach who once cut Peary from his team.

Just as Edwards himself never apologized for being all Great Britain had to offer in February 1988, director Dexter Fletcher’s Eddie the Eagle doesn’t apologize for being what February 2016 has to offer for family-friendly entertainment. (It would have been a little more friendly to families, and to everyone, without Jackman’s icky enactment of the orgasmic feeling of a ski jump — attributed to the inspiration of Bo Derek and set to Bolero.)

Shamelessly, Fletcher and his screenwriters (Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton) toss in everything they think an underdog sports story might conceivably have use for: a supportive mom, a discouraging dad, a sneering administrator, a cocky competitor, a mystical wunderkind, a pair of play-by-play announcers, and a bunch of buff blonde Norwegian assholes.

Again like Edwards, the film isn’t particularly graceful — it’s a modular assembly, with one scene doing what it needs to do and then cutting unceremoniously to the next — but it gets the job done. What’s distinctive about the movie is how Fletcher plays to the time period not just with the characters’ togs and a few choice soundtrack selections (if you think this movie is going to omit Van Halen’s “Jump,” you have another think coming), but with a thoroughgoing vintage naiveté.

’80s nostalgists will particularly glory at Matthew Margeson’s score, which doesn’t go light on the synths, the snares, or any other elements of a totally awesome action-movie score from the Reagan era. Those hoping for a trip back in time won’t be disappointed. Those looking for a soaring sports story…well, it does fly, and it does land. Did I mention there’s an apt metaphor here?

– Jay Gabler