Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga Review

Eurovision is upon us. It is a celebration of pop music from across Europe and brought us iconic acts like Abba and Bucks Fizz. It serves as the subject for a Netflix comedy that starred Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams.

Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell) is a man who has a simple dream: win Eurovision for Iceland. He performs in a band with his best friend Sigrit Ericksdóttir (Rachel McAdams). They get their chance after a tragic event kills all the other major acts from Iceland and they get to compete in Edinburgh. But the pair face technical issues, malicious rivals, and nefarious forces from their homeland.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga came across as a mix of the Pitch Perfect movies and the Father Ted episode “Song for Europe”. The Pitch Perfect movies were comedies set in the world of competitive a cappella singing and they followed a sports movie template. The Eurovision movie used some of the ideas from the Pitch Perfect films like the rivalry between the protagonists and a rival competitor and during the middle of Eurovision, all the characters have a singalong.

The Eurovision movie copied the plot of Father Ted’s “Song for Europe.” In that episode, Ted and Dougal write and perform a song so they could be Ireland’s entry for Eurovision. However, in that episode, the Irish wanted to send the worst act possible so they could lose because hosting Eurovision was bankrupting the nation. The villain of the film had the same plan because he believed Iceland couldn’t host the next Eurovision. Eurovision was pretty much that story idea done with a movie size budget.

Eurovision sadly had a predictable screenplay. It took ideas from other films. An example of this was Fire Saga getting into Eurovision was through a technicality, like what happened with the Avenge Joe Dodgeball team in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. The central relationship between Lars and Sigrit was a will-they, won’t-they romance. Sigrit was in love with Lars but he was unaware of her feelings. The pair have potential love rivals during the course of the film. Lars has a disapproving father (Pierce Bronson). Erik feels his son was a disappointment and that his Eurovision dreams were embarrassing and foolish. Anyone with any basic film literacy could predict most of the plot points.

For a long time, Will Ferrell had played a similar role: a giant man-child. He did this in films like Elf, Step-Brothers, and Holmes & Watson. The returns were increasingly diminished. As Lars was another loser character: he was a middle-aged man in a dead-end job who still lived at home and has unrealistic dreams. Yet he also has inexplicable sex appeal because Sigrit and the Greek contestant (Melissanthi Mahut) wanted him.

Ferrell co-wrote the screenplay for Eurovision. This oddly made Ferrell rein in his performance because he didn’t have to ad-lib like he does in other films. There was only one big Ferrell rant in the film. There was at least a structure to the film compared to some of his recent films and there were some jokes that made me chuckle. The film was clocked in at two hours which unfortunately made Eurovision flappy.

The European Broadcasting Union co-produced the film. This meant that the film had Eurovision licensing. This made the film feel a bit more authentic and the performances seemed like they could have been real Eurovision acts. However, this was a problem because the performances weren’t humorous when they should have been. Eurovision has a reputation for being really campy: the film should have played on that, given us some funny over-the-top performances, and had fun with the different musical cultures from across Europe.

As an Englishman, I did find it humorous that Eurovision was hosted in Edinburgh because it would have meant Britain would have won the previous Eurovision. This would have been unlikely because the British has a reputation for being hated in Europe. The film even makes a joke about the British contestant having no chance of winning because Europe hates the UK. The film mentions that the winning of Eurovision hosts the next competition, so leads to the question how did Britain host the tournament? It’s a logical fallacy.

On a final note, I did enjoy the end credits where “Jaja Ding Dong” and all the cast moments had the flag of their nation appear next to their name.

The Eurovision movie was sadly a mediocre comedy where laughs were too few and far between.