Few points for Eurovision spoof
Eurovision Song Contest – The Story of Fire Saga Cert 15, Netflix
Gone be the days when the Eurovision Song Contest might launch enduring pop careers and display some of the best song-writing talent in the world. Since then — as we know all too well — it has become a slickly produced farce where the aim is to out-kitsch everyone else with any gimmick to hand. But if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, as they say. Many have come to embrace the Eurovision’s annual slab of silliness and celebrate it as a reality freak show to escape into.
The first question upon seeing this comedy send-up from producer and star Will Ferrell and director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, Shanghai Knights) is how to parody something that is by and large already a selfparody? The answer is you can’t, which from the very get-go renders this twohour-long film as an exercise in futility.
Ferrell and Rachel McAdams play Icelandic music duo Alexander and Sigrit. Their smalltown dreams of pop stardom are going nowhere fast, until, that is, they win their national Eurosong contest by default after an explosion wipes out the competition. Much to the chagrin of Alexander’s stern father (Pierce Brosnan), the pair set off for the extravaganza in Edinburgh and are thrown right into its ultra-camp carnival.
Cracks appear when Sigrit is charmed by a louche Russian competitor (Dan Stevens) and Alexander is seduced by the feisty Greek entry (Melissanthi Mahut). This and the inevitable run of calamities that befall the pair are the many
staples that every talent-contest film falls into line with. These are not that harmful to the film. What really drags it down is how hard it tries to conjure up laughs that simply aren’t there in the writing via Ferrell’s braying, a trend in many of his films.
It’s funny there should be a running joke here about US backpackers treating Europe like a playground because it can feel like that is exactly what Ferrell and co-writer Andrew
Steele are about. It’s as if he discovered this gas eurotrash curiosity (Ferrell’s wife is Swedish) and wants to give US viewers a crash course in it.
McAdams (the film’s best asset), the Icelandic landscape, and the reliably giddy stage pizzazz offer the better moments here. Ferrell undoes any good work by toggling into “force-feed” mode with his comedy shtick. And the harder he tries, the more we recoil.