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The earlier scenes of Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin, 2020) are set in the Icelandic hometown of Lars (Will Ferrell) and Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), a singing duo of hopefuls for Eurovision. The film unfortunately suffers from unimaginative writing and idle comedy, but the Icelandic opening moments feel disappointingly promising. It opens in Húsavík, the duo’s fictional hometown, with some visually encouraging shots of and homages to local scenery and folklore. While one scene of synchronised whales twirling seems to strike the desired tonal balance between tongue-in-cheek characterisations of Iceland and the film’s natural levity, this tone is replicated with little success throughout the rest of the film. The lead characters of Lars (Will Ferrell) and Sigrit (Rachel McAdams) feel like a mismatched pair of actors and like an odd duo of performers, but the small potential for comedy that this permits is wasted by facile and uninteresting characterisations and plot complications. Similarly, co-star Dan Stevens does his best to grapple with his role as a tedious half-antagonist, adding a little life – but unfortunately not his own great vocals – to the limp character of Alexander Lemtov, a fellow contestant from Russia.

About halfway through, the film begins to lose all the aspiring underdog charm of its beginning. Its inelegant structure does little to innovate existing storylines of the same ilk, and the comedy fails to redeem what little is left. A strange scene where our two leads argue over going ‘sex-nuts’ is an epitome of the awkward, ill-thought-out comedy dialogue which saturates the lazy script. An especially gruelling moment comes when the pair remix their prospective song ‘Double Trouble’, where they enlist the help of fictional K-Pop star Bae-Jong. This meeting is followed by a series of stereotypical semantical quips about the star’s confusion of ‘f’ and ‘p’ sounds, which are unoriginal, feel unsubtly racist, and are made even worse by the knowledge that the K-Pop star is portrayed by a British-Chinese actor, as opposed to a Korean one. This casting decision and uninventive, offensive humour shows a strange sense of homogenisation on behalf of Netflix in its view of Asian countries, which feels especially odd for a film which centralises the Eurovision song contest, a supposed expression of multi-national unity.

A sense of deep misunderstanding perhaps explains this film’s mundanity and disunity with anything resembling Eurovision, which feels regretful when you learn of Ferrell’s passion for the actual event, being introduced to it in 1999 by his Swedish wife. Starring American actors, written by American creators, it attempts the monumental task of trying to capture the cultural appeal of Eurovision, while obviously having little to no understanding of what that actually is despite attempts at research. This is clear in the film’s prioritisation of misguided comedy over musical talent, the few moments of musical electricity coming from cameo star Demi Lovato and McAdams alone, amidst the spiritless composition of the other musical acts. My interest was piqued for Eurovision Song Contest when Demi Lovato posted a clip of her role on instagram, showcasing her heady and seraphic vocals. Unfortunately, there is far too little of her in this film. Lovato’s acting and musical talent is wasted, as is the bland and stupid storyline surrounding her character. For a film full of veteran performers like McAdams, Ferrell and Stevens, Eurovision is utterly unimpressive in its story, characterisation and, very importantly, its music.

One of the earliest ensemble musical moments is composed of some weird low angle camera shots and a music video-like spontaneous singing montage starring former Eurovision winners and actors. A potentially nostalgic and charming moment to pay homage to the film’s focus, it instead feels crowded, overproduced and gimmicky. Much of the spirit of Eurovision is to embrace the camp and play with theatricality, but the relatively sophisticated balance of this with musical artistry is lost in the poor imitations of music and costumes in Eurovision Song Contest. While this may be a deliberate choice for comic appeal, the history of Ferrell’s attraction to the contest and the fact that creators were clearly capable of producing non-homogenised, evocative musical moments with Lovato and McAdams’ (whose voice was combined with Icelandic singer Molly Sandén’s) ethereal vocals, highlights the laziness with which the rest of the contest was approached. Each act preceding Fire Saga showcases little inspiration or compositional effort, unimaginative set designs  (with few exceptions) and generic lyrics. The film’s efforts thus feel like more of a failure to replicate rather than a mockery of the actual contest, despite it being the supposed comedic focus of the film. 

Sadly, the small doses of chemistry between the lead pair fails to make up for a lack of dynamic stage presence or plot ingenuity. Essentially lacking in personality, not even McAdams and Ferrell can compensate for the sheer jadedness of Eurovision Song Contest, whose highlight (for me) was a less-than-30 second snapshot of performance from Demi Lovato. All in all, Eurovision works as a less than memorable Will Ferrell movie and little else.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is available to stream on Netflix.