The story of British ski jumper Michael “Eddie” Edwards is of the classic underdog variety: In the 1988 Winter Olympic games in Calgary, he inspired people around the world with his bright personality and infectious enthusiasm, becoming the first ski jumper to represent Great Britain at the games. Funny thing is, Eddie lost. He lost BAD and in spectacular fashion. In both the 70m and 90m events he came in dead last, failing utterly and completely by most competitive standards. Nonetheless, the guy garnered millions of fans simply because he was happy (almost hilariously happy) to be there and do his absolute best.

What Dexter Fletcher‘s Eddie The Eagle gets right is its willingness to poke fun at Eddie, played here by Kingsman: The Secret Service‘s Taron Egerton. Too often movies of its ilk take their subject too seriously, in turn making the story feel schmaltzy, pruned and disingenuous. Fletcher’s film takes several liberties with Eddie’s journey, most notably inserting a fictional trainer (Hugh Jackman). This is easy to swallow: Historical accuracy will never be the most important aspect of telling someone’s life story. Capturing and paying respect to the person’s spirit and reflecting the true value of their accomplishments? That’s everything.

It’s the essence we’re after. In the case of Eddie, his essence is an ability to find pride, joy, and positivity in the face of adversity, derision, and even failure. When he was eliminated from Britain’s downhill ski team, he opted to take up the even more dangerous discipline of ski jumping instead of giving up. When he jumped a comparatively short distance than his competitors at the games, he celebrated and played to the cameras and excited crowds, simply happy to live his dreams. That’s his legacy, funny and inspiring at the same time, and that’s precisely how the movie feels.

Egerton—unrecognizable from his character in Kingsman, donning Edwards’ signature thick glasses, thick mustache and awkward posture—exudes the unlikely Olympian’s plucky positivity without being a caricature. When Eddie’s blue-collar dad (Keith Allen) pulls up to a bus stop to find his son packed and ready to leave home in pursuit of his Olympic dream, he barks at him to get in the car. “Have you ever had a dream?” Eddie asks, to which his father defiantly barks, “To be a plasterer! Let’s go home.” With his chin held determinedly high, Eddie says with compassion, “Bye, dad.”

When Eddie arrives in Germany to train for Olympic qualification, he meets a drunk ex-jumper, Bronson Peary (Jackman), who reluctantly (after relentless pestering) agrees to train young Eddie to land jumps instead of breaking his neck. The juxtaposition of the grizzled veteran and the clumsy rookie is good fun and would have worked better with a few tweaks to Jackman’s character or even a different casting choice. The Austrailian actor simply looks too put together and dashing to be a convincing drunken mess, and the alcoholism angle screenwriters Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton go with feels unneeded, a futile attempt at making Bronson look like a loser. The actors do have chemistry, though, and Jackman’s pure gold in a scene that sees him illustrate the art of a takeoff via a feigned orgasm á la When Harry Met Sally. The moment is so absurd (especially in the family-movie context) that you can’t help but laugh at how much fun the movie’s having.

With the help of Bronson, Eddie finally makes it to the Winter Olympics in Calgary (despite dastardly attempts by the British Olympic Committee to block his participation, mostly because he’s goofy looking) where he at first enjoys his sudden stardom but then is reminded by coach Bronson to take himself more seriously and put forth his best effort despite the fact that he’s been ski jumping for a fraction of the time his competitors have. To the shock of everyone watching his Olympic escapades, Eddie vows to compete in the potentially deadly 90m jump, which leads us directly into the movie’s obligatory “He did it! He did it!” crescendo. The rousing finale’s done excellently though a random subplot involving Bronson’s old mentor (Christopher Walken) deflates the excitement for an excruciating few moments. There are no revolutionary changes made to the underdog formula, but the movie is special in that it celebrates the pride one finds in the simple act of participation.

Ski jumping, as it turns out, is one of the most cinematic of sports: Watching a human being soar through the icy air with long, slender skis stuck to his feet is an awe-inspiring sight, and Fletcher gets a lot of mileage out of a sport that pretty much looks the same every time (the variable being whether the poor guy eats snow or not; we see both successful and failed landings), using CGI stylishly and tastefully and giving us a terrifying sense of how goddamn high these athletes actually go. Looking down from the top of the 90m jump is bloodcurdlingly scary, and Fletcher makes sure to drive home just how crazy Eddie is to take up such a dangerous sport with such little experience. Once Eddie’s in flight, however, Fletcher has fun with interesting angles and brisk editing that, at its best, is exhilarating.

Most of Eddie the Eagle‘s success can be attributed to young Mr. Egerton. He makes us laugh at Eddie without making him clownish, and he makes us care for him without being corny. It’s a spot-on performance that sets the pace for everything else in the film, and he should be proud of the fact that, in this instance, he acts circles around the infinitely less memorable Jackman, a bonafide screen veteran. The gap in tone and timing and attitude between this role and Egerton’s turn in Kingsman is cavernous, and he makes the jump effortlessly (apologies for the totally-intentional pun).

The best boxing matches are roller coasters of emotion, full of twists, shifts in momentum and ungodly displays of skill. Unlike a classic big-time fight, Southpaw, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a short-fuse champion prizefighter who falls from the top of the mountain and crawls his way back up, offers no such surprises or knockout performances. Its title, which refers to the unconventional left-handed boxing stance, couldn’t be more ironic considering how conventional and easy-to-read this movie is.

Cliché is king in director Antoine Fuqua‘s store-brand boxing drama, and a valiant tough-guy transformation by Gyllenhaal just isn’t enough to keep things interesting. Scrunching his perpetually swollen face, flexing his bulging muscles in fits of rage and slurring his words in hopes of garnering punch-drunk sympathy, Gyllenhaal gives “his everything” as Billy “The Great” Hope, the movie’s meathead hero. Billy fights with a death wish, dropping his hands and welcoming his opponents’ haymakers with reckless abandon; unlike most boxing movie underdogs, however, Billy’s got everything to lose.

We meet Billy at the top of his game, on a 43-fight win streak as the light-heavyweight champ of the world. He’s got a nurturing wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), who grew up with him in the same Hell’s Kitchen orphanage; she’s been there from the jump, and he worships her for it. She organizes every aspect of his life so that he can concentrate on bludgeoning his heavy-handed dance partners. Their precocious daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence), wants nothing more than to watch her dad in the ring, though the thought is too much for Maureen to stomach. As Billy spits up blood after his fights, Maureen sends Leila two-word texts: “Daddy won.”

In a tragic turn of events that has a snowflake’s chance in hell of surprising anyone, a heated scuffle at a charity event between Billy and smack-talking rival Miguel Escobar (Miguel Gomez) gets out of hand: shots ring out in the hotel lobby, and the scene ends with Billy cradling his dying wife in his arms. This sends him on the obligatory downward spiral of suicidal, drunken rage; he loses his money, house, cars, friends, more than a little bit of his sanity, and most regrettably, Leila, who’s taken away by child services. His Don King-like manager/promoter (50 Cent) offers moral support, though even he turns on Billy when he decides to jump ship and manage Escobar instead.

Floundering in abject poverty, Billy seeks the tutelage of old-timer Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker), the former coach of the only man to ever beat Billy in the ring (in Billy’s mind, not the split-decision scorecards). Wills “doesn’t train pro fighters anymore,” instead dedicating himself to mentoring troubled youths and teaching them discipline through via the “sweet science.” But who are we kidding? Wills, of course, eventually changes his mind and trains Billy to fight Escobar for the world title in the film’s final, epic(ish) battle.

Fuqua cakes on grimy imagery of in-ring brutality and low-lit interiors to reflect the darkness inside Billy’s soul (or something faux-poetic like that), but none of it yields any dramatic dividends; the movie just looks gross. With the fight scenes, the filmmakers try to mimic modern televised boxing presentations while throwing in quick cuts of jabs, hooks and body shots seemingly at random. Basically, the fights look like every other fight in every other forgettable boxing movie. First-person shots from both Billy and Escobar’s perspectives are butt-ugly and laughably distracting.

Gyllenhaal is a better storyteller with his facial expressions and body language than screenwriter Kurt Sutter is with his uninspired dialogue. As Billy learns to be a smarter, calmer fighter both inside and outside the ring, Gyllenhaal’s mannerisms reflect his newfound ability to not lose his shit at the tiniest aggravation. It’s a slow-burn character arc, and he conveys each stage of maturation with careful articulation. He’s the only thing in the movie that whiffs of any passion.

Southpaw is nothing more than a loosely-stitched patchwork of ideas ripped straight out of every boxing movie ever. It always feels like we’re five steps ahead of the story, and that’s because we’ve seen this stuff a million times before. The movie was originally designed as a showcase film for Eminem (heaven knows what kind of disaster that would have been), and though it’s far from a success, Gyllenhaal (barely) keeps Southpaw from staying down for the count.

The story at the center of sports doc Next Goal Wins is classic underdog material: American Samoa’s national football (soccer) team is notorious for suffering one of the worst losses in the history of the sport, losing to Australia 31-0 in 2001. The failure haunted the team for years, particularly their emotionally scarred goalie, Nicky, who’s watched the ball whoosh by him and into the net so many times (including those embarrassing 31 points) it torments him daily. Filmmakers Mike Brett and Steve Jamison follow the team (ranked as the worst team in the world by FIFA for years) as they give their mind, body, and spirit to trek down the path of redemption with the lofty goal of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Any filmmaker with a decent skill set could fashion a good movie out of this stuff with minimal effort; the story is remarkable in itself, basically tailor-made for the sports doc format. But Brett and Jamison go above and beyond, crafting an uplifting, stirring film that does the team justice. The players give their heart and soul on the field, and Brett and Jamison give their heart and soul behind the camera and in the editing room.

Nicky, who still plays on the team more than a decade after the brutal loss to Australia, hasn’t improved much as a player since; the team is still on an epic losing streak, after all. But his ability to recognize his shortcomings and use his past failures as motivation makes him an inspiration to the younger players on the team. Despite his undying spirit, he’s getting older, and he’s got a family in Seattle who needs him. In 2011, Nicky retired from the sport with the burden of his terrible performances weighing heavy on his shoulders.

Identifying as Samoa’s third gender, Fa’afafine, Jaiyah Saelua is the unofficial beating heart of the team. “I walk feminine, I do feminine things…but as soon as the whistle blows, I turn all of that off.” The Samoan community genuinely accepts transgender people unlike most Western cultures, and it’s heartwarming to see how warm and effortlessly indiscriminate she’s treated by her teammates.

Though the team isn’t lacking in drive or passion, they sorely lack the skills to make them competitive on the international level. To help the team get their game up to par, the United States Soccer Federation send a savior; an experienced, hard-nosed Dutchman named Thomas Rongen (he was the only applicant to respond to a help-wanted ad).

At first a bullheaded taskmaster who finds the Samoan community’s laid-back lifestyle a detriment to quality training, he slowly but surely loosens up, soaking in the beauty of island life. He’s amazed at the fact that most of the players practice football on their free time, as they go to multiple jobs throughout the day and night. “Show me how to fight. I’ll show you how to win,” Rongen pleads with his troops in a motivational speech.

Once he and the team get comfortable with each other, he shares with them that he and his wife lost their daughter at 18. He urges the players (some of whom are as old as his daughter was when she died) to make the most of every minute, a beautiful scene that’s the hallmark of countless sports movies, but is as stirring here as any.

Rongen and the team, now well-trained, pumped up, and anxious to redeem themselves and represent their country well, take the field in a series of World Cup qualifying matches, captured beautifully by the directors. The matches are incredibly tense and entertaining, and look as slick as a narrative sports production. In fact, the whole movie looks incredibly cinematic, with the filmmakers capturing the serenity of the island and the spirituality it inspires in all its inhabitants.

After calling it quits, Nicky is convinced by coach Rongen to return to the team and play in the qualifying matches. The fact that the players (particularly Jaiyah, who emerges as a star) are leaving their blood and guts on the field to honor their country is rousing enough, but the added element of Nicky fighting to prove once and for all that he isn’t a loser with all his might makes the third act of the film simply electric. Next Goal Wins is a shining example of how sports aren’t simply about competition and domination, but about camaraderie, self-discovery, and love.

Next Goal Wins trailer