EUROVISION GETS CRAZY
Will Ferrell’s Song Contest spoof is even more bonkers than the real thing!
FOR those still feeling bereft after the cancellation of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest — and there must be one or even two of you out there — here’s something to plug the gap, a Will Ferrell comedy that, just like Eurovision night itself, shamelessly outstays its welcome.
Its sporadic laughs would just about sustain a 95-minute film, but director David Dobkin gets nul points for stretching them over two hours. Even at that indulgent running time, however, he never wholly solves the problem of how to parody an event that has long since become a parody of itself.
Ferrell plays Lars Erickssong, an Icelandic version of his familiar man- child character. Lars has been nuts about Eurovision since boyhood, when Abba’s performance of Waterloo dragged him out of his gloom over the death of his mother.
With his elf- obsessed best friend Sigrit Ericksdottir (Rachel McAdams), he forms a pop duo, Fire Saga. They yearn to represent Iceland in the forthcoming contest, which is being held in Edinburgh. When all the other contenders mysteriously die in a huge explosion, they get their chance.
If they win, Iceland will have to host the show the following year — which is why the country’s finance minister wants them to fail, as the cost would sink the beleaguered economy.
Lars’s fisherman father Erick ( Pierce Brosnan, but don’t worry, he doesn’t sing) fully
expects them to fail, on the basis that Lars has been a loser all his life. Heck, the lad doesn’t even like the smell of fish.
CAN Lars confound his father’s low expectations? Will he ever realise that Sigrit is in love with him? Might they even be brother and sister, given that Erick is Iceland’s most handsome man and a renowned womaniser? In Edinburgh, these and other questions are resolved.
There are some genuine laughs in all this — and the added bonus of Graham norton gamely playing himself. Dan Stevens has a hoot locating his inner George Michael as the oily Russian entrant Alexander Lemtov, who tries to seduce Sigrit — ‘If it helps I can throw in Faberge egg, personal submersible, pet tiger’ — and Dobkin throws what can only be called the kitschen sink into the look of the show.
Sadly, neither the premise nor the script (co-written by Ferrell) can cope with the film’s inordinate length. On which subject, there are puerile gags about penis size that would cheapen a sixth-form revue. But if you love Ferrell’s well-honed emotionally stunted act — and in fairness, plenty do — maybe this comedy will sing to you.
I LIKED IRRESISTIBLE more, but it too is not without flaws. It’s a sometimes sharp, sometimes laboured political satire written and directed by the U.S. comedian and former talk- show host Jon Stewart.
Steve Carell plays Gary Zimmer, a celebrated Washington DC spin doctor who heads for rural Deerlaken, Wisconsin, after seeing a video of local farmer Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), who is also a retired Marines colonel, making an impassioned town hall speech about citizens’ rights.
Gary wants the colonel to run for election as the Democratic Party’s candidate for mayor, and cynically plans to use Jack’s obvious integrity as a boost for the Democrats on a national level.
The Republicans won’t take this lying down. They fly in his longtime rival Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) to play him at his own game. Both are fish out of water in the folksy town. There’s a twist I mustn’t divulge, but it should come sooner. By the time it arrives, much of the fun, at the expense of a U.S. electioneering system far more reliant on dollars than on decency, has run out of poke.
Irresistible is never less than watchable and often enjoyable, but Frank Capra covered similar territory more adeptly 80 years ago in Mr Smith Goes To Washington.