Review: Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga

 

Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams play Lars and Sigrit, Icelandic wannabe musicians whose dream is to represent Iceland at the Eurovision Song Contest and win. Well, it’s Lars’ dream. Sigrit humours him because she’s always been in love with the oblivious dope who is uber-focussed on the music. Although the people in charge of choosing the Icelandic entry find Lars and Sigrit’s act ‘Fire Saga’ an embarrassment, a bizarre calamity results in them having no choice but to send them to the big contest held in Scotland. Will Lars’ dream of Eurovision glory come to fruition? Scheming Russian entrant Dan Stevens certainly hopes not, as he tries to drive a wedge between Lars and Sigrit. Pierce Brosnan plays Lars’ macho father who is embarrassed by his son’s musical pursuit.

 

By attempting to give some love to Eurovision fans whilst also playing to the standard Will Ferrell audience, this overlong, hit-and-miss 2020 comedy-drama probably won’t satisfy either camp (no pun intended) fully. I’ve enjoyed some of Ferrell’s work over the years, particularly his more ambitious films like “Stranger Than Fiction”, but I mostly came to this David Dobkin (who directed the moderately enjoyable trio of “Wedding Crashers”, “The Change-Up” and the legal drama “The Judge”) film as a Eurovision fan. I haven’t missed a single year since I first started watching in the late 90s. I wanted to love this film. I wanted it to be the Eurovision version of “Mamma Mia!” perhaps (though I’m glad to report that Pierce Brosnan doesn’t sing in this one, the lone flaw of the ABBA tribute film). It’s not, and it just reiterates what I’ve always believed: Americans just don’t ‘get’ Eurovision. Dobkin and Ferrell may have watched it a few times and liked it, but it’s not something they grew up with. It’s not ingrained in their DNA. A film about Eurovision needed to be made by one of the Eurovision countries, including EBU Special Member Australia (It’s not about being European, it’s about the European Broadcasting Union members), countries who know and love (and sometimes love to laugh at) Eurovision.

 

Look, I get it. Ferrell filmed scenes on the same stage as the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel, and there’s some Eurovision cameos throughout, including Irish-born TV host and Eurovision commentator Graham Norton. So perhaps Ferrell felt he needed to pay some reverence to the institution given the film comes ‘In association with the EBU’. Reverence is not where the fun really lies with Eurovision though, is it? We all know that the late, Welsh-born Eurovision commentator Terry Wogan made plenty of off-colour comments over the years that clearly wouldn’t jive now. He was a teeny bit racist and sexist at times. But wasn’t Eurovision at its absolute best when Sir Terry was taking the piss out of it? When we were all taking the piss out of it? Yes, the contest itself is a bit more polished and therefore less amusing than it used to be, but still…couldn’t Ferrell (who has apparently been a viewer of the contest since the late 90s like myself) and Dobkin have skewered the show just a teeny tiny bit? Instead, the film plays more like a traditional underdog tale with a large helping of Ferrell comic silliness and a bit of Eurovision flavour. At around 2 hours in length, it’s a pretty tough sell and I imagine most will get somewhat restless.

 

Let’s be honest, Ferrell’s getting far too old for this same old juvenile shit isn’t he? He’s likeable enough, but his schtick gets played out pretty quickly here, and his performance isn’t good enough or believable enough to buy into the underdog aspect either. Co-star Rachael McAdams hasn’t exactly got the best comedic chops but she’s extremely likeable here at least. She’s genuinely trying to play a character, whilst Ferrell is playing Icelandic Buddy where McAdams’ approach is more befitting an underdog story that sticks around for 2 freaking hours. Pierce Brosnan, despite being very obviously Irish, is a good choice to play a grizzled Icelandic patriarch who doesn’t understand the appeal of all this singing and is embarrassed about his son (Pierce Brosnan being embarrassed about someone’s singing? ‘LOL’, as the young hip kids would say). The wintery scenery is wonderful too, and a Conchita Wurst cameo is always welcome in my eyes. Conchita’s the best of a fairly sorry bunch of recent Eurovision winners in my view (My all-time favourite contestants? Frankston-born Irish multi-time winner Johnny Logan, Swedish monster metal band Lordi who won in 2006, Aussie singer Guy Sebastian – who was robbed of victory a few years ago, and of course ABBA). However, the film is just too affectionate and reverent, and the fun in that is extremely limited for me.

 

I will say that even in the pre-Eurovision phase, some of the song contestants are a fairly believable mix of genuinely OK, awful, and somewhat competent. So the filmmakers have at least some knowledge of how to present this kind of thing, even if they don’t know where to go with it. However, they really show themselves up as novices by having Eurovision take place in…Scotland? How did the UK manage to win? They’ve been getting ‘Nil Points’ for about 5 years straight or something if I’m not mistaken. Meanwhile, uber-bland Dan Stevens doesn’t even try to come across as remotely Russian (he could’ve been from anywhere), let alone remotely credible as a Eurovision act – good or bad. He’s woeful, playing the stereotypical lecherous, deceitful rival cad character. The central act Fire Saga, meanwhile lends itself too much to the usual Ferrell slapstick moron silliness. This should never have been a Ferrell vehicle, let alone an ungainly mixture of Ferrell vehicle and bloated underdog story. There’s a few chuckles here and there, but not as many as can be had watching some of the vintage years of Eurovision. For the most part the humour is all broad, generalised stuff that is designed to play to Ferrell’s audience, not a Eurovision-savvy one. It says a lot that the best gag in the film isn’t about Eurovision at all, but about Andrew Ridgely from Wham! I did however really like the bit where Ferrell descends from a hamster wheel-like contraption. That was marvellously stupid, as is a mid-act wardrobe malfunction. The rest of the humour however, is just too strained. The underdog story side of things meanwhile, is mostly just tedious and clichéd. There might’ve even been a slow clap in there somewhere. As for the Eurovision ‘star’ cameos, UK talk show host/Eurovision commentator Graham Norton is actually the most clearly visible, though I also spotted Conchita Wurst and Alexander Rybak in what is a pretty piddly, ‘let’s get them all in on one brief sing-a-long’ sequence. As a Eurovision nut, I expected more to be honest. Norton (who I like just fine on his TV talk show, lovely guy) looks bored and barely does anything other than recite his lines. I hope he wasn’t paid a whole helluva lot for his sleepwalking services.

 

Despite some ‘star’ cameos, this film is clearly not aimed at fans of the Eurovision Song Contest. It isn’t clever, skewed, or pointed enough for the Eurovision set. I also don’t think the majority of Will Ferrell fans will be terribly interested in a two hour film about the Eurovision Song Contest which doesn’t even really make fun of said contest. I don’t think a Will Ferrell vehicle was the way to go with this subject matter. It’s not a complete disaster, but what exactly was the point here? It’s pretty useless actually, having even less laughs than the usual hit-and-miss Ferrell comedy. A very likeable Rachel McAdams tries hard to get into the spirit of things, but I didn’t like this much. The screenplay is by Ferrell and Andrew Steele (a veteran writer of the American skit show “SNL”), who are very lucky to not being getting ‘Nil Points’ from the delegate from Australia.

 

Rating: C