Streaming movies

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

Will Ferrell comedies have been hit and miss in recent times, and here the big man lands a resounding miss. He and Rachel McAdams play Lars and Sigrit, two Icelandic singer-songwriters whose dream is to represent their country at the Eurovision and maybe even win it.

Lars’ father, Erick (Pierce Brosnan), is a beer-swilling fisherman who wishes his middle-aged son would just grow up. Little chance of that, especially when a freak boating accident kills all the other entrants for Iceland’s

National Song Contest, leaving Lars and Sigrit’s group Fire Saga with a clear run to this year’s Eurovision in Edinburgh.

Despite his heroic attempts at a Scandinavian twang, there’s little to distinguish Lars from any of the clumsy idiots Mr Ferrell has played in a dozen other half-assed comedies. McAdams performs a thin role with grace and charm, and Brosnan almost succeeds in hiding himself completely behind a heroic salt and pepper beard.

Dan Stevens alone provides actual laughs playing an absurdly dashing and selfconfident Russian singer who says things like “sexy time” with chilling conviction.

The songs are quite good, too good in fact to be actual entries for the real Eurovision, an annual parade of tone deaf Eurotrashery which we’ve mercifully been spared this year. But overall The Story of Fire Saga falls flat on its face, and I think I know why. After all, how do you satirise something that does the job so very effectively itself?