Leave it to the Brits to give us the second movie in seven years about a hapless sports figure who was quite terrible and never really got any better and yet somehow became a beloved figure because of his dogged determination and permanent underdog status. In 2015, we had Taron Egerton as “Eddie the Eagle,” who finished last in two Olympic ski jumping events at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, and now comes “The Phantom of the Open,” with Mark Rylance as one Maurice Flitcroft, a laid-off crane worker in the port town of Barrow-in-Furness (such a British name!) who wrangled his way into the 1976 Open Championship and shot a 121 — by far the worst score in the tournament’s history.
What next, a TV series about a fictional mid-level American football coach who is hired by a British soccer club even though he doesn’t even know the rules of the game, hates tea and tells his players, “Be a goldfish”?
