Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

I was drawn to this movie randomly by the title, thinking it might be a documentary about the competition. That's how I seem to be doing it these days, floating around the internet. Once I got to it I saw right away it's a Will Ferrell movie but by then I had the momentum. Full disclosure, I have not seen many Will Ferrell movies. I know he can be funny—I laughed at some of his antics here, for example—but he has always struck me as an unlikely comic figure. He's not funny so much as he is warm and almost wholesome in his basic ineptitude. Elf could well be his peak. Here he plays Lars Erickssong. a ne'er-do-well middle-aged man, still living at home, whose only dream is to compete and win in the Eurovision contest like his lifelong idols ABBA. The picture is set in Iceland and full of gorgeous location shots, slippery Nordic accents from the cast, and lots of Viking jokes. Rachel McAdams plays Sigrit Ericksdottir, who may or may not be the daughter of Erick Erickssong (Pierce Brosnan), the town lothario and father of many, including Lars. Thus there is a really funny (by which I mean not funny at all) running joke that Lars and Sigrit are half-siblings and incestual. I haven't seen much of McAdams either but I liked her in Mean Girls 17 years ago. It's all pleasantly mindless watching. For the most part the picture is making fun of Eurovision, which is not hard to do, but they are not entirely immune to the charms of eurotrash dance music either, and some of that comes through—not enough. The story beats are familiar. Either they're going to be unlikely winners of the competition or they're going to come close. That's not really a spoiler because even though it's predictable enough in all the big ways, down at the level of the narrative Eurovision Song Contest zigs and zags and has some surprises. My favorite parts, and there weren't nearly enough of them for a movie with this title, were the musical acts, all cheese, colored lights, synthy keyboards, and pouting expressions. I know there's no accounting for taste. I could never watch more than five minutes at a time of American Idol but I'm still inclined to put the time in on as much euro-disco as I can handle, which might be a lot. However, it looks like I also might have to put effort into hunting down some of the documents. In fact, I see there's one from 2002, Estonia Dreams of Eurovision!, that looks like it might have been the model for this Will Farrell vehicle, which: approach with caution.