Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test: The Sto­ry of Fire Saga

As a per­former, Will Fer­rell is a sin­gle string to his bow kin­da guy. There’s a moment in David Dobkin’s breezi­ly for­mu­la­ic Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test: The Sto­ry of Fire Saga where he his doltish man-child Lars is out at sea in his father’s small fish­ing boat. He pan­ics and starts flap­ping about scream­ing, ​“Where’s the exit?! Where’s the exit?!” while the crew look on in amazement.

It’s a dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of Ferrell’s go-to com­ic schtick, and while it often man­ages to be fair­ly amaz­ing, it is also instant­ly sym­bol­ic of the fact that this film isn’t doing any­thing new or excit­ing with its per­form­ers or, indeed, its sto­ry or the man­ner in which its craft­ed. It’s a straight-down-the-mid­dle, com­pe­ti­tion com­e­dy cen­tred on Europe’s flag-wav­ing nexus of high camp, Euro­vi­sion. And it works on those very mod­est terms.

As a young boy, Lars hears ABBA per­form­ing ​‘Water­loo’ live dur­ing the 1974 con­test and decides from that very moment on to ded­i­cate his life to music, spe­cial­ly, claim­ing vic­to­ry at Euro­vi­sion. It’s a believ­able epiphany – who wouldn’t want to emu­late the melod­ic per­fec­tion of ABBA?

One hitch is that the boy hap­pens to be the son of a gruff, small-town Ice­landic fish­er­man played by Pierce Bros­nan who declares the idea is idi­ot­ic. The oth­er hitch is that the boy, Lars, grows into – of course – an acci­dent-prone man child, albeit one who has devel­oped basic Europop song­writ­ing skills and a kook­i­ly tal­ent­ed part­ner in Rachel McAdams Elf-obses­sive Sigrit. There’s an unspo­ken roman­tic affec­tion between the pair which may or may not come to fruition.

Their band, Fire Saga, boasts a reper­toire that includes a cov­er of Pharrell’s ​‘Hap­py’ and a beloved dit­ty named ​‘Ja Ja Ding Dong’ which sends the local drunks into parox­ysms of vio­lent joy. When, in a strange bureau­crat­ic sna­fu, they’re cho­sen to rep­re­sent Ice­land in Euro­vi­sion, we fol­low their fish-out-of-water adven­tures in Edin­burgh where every­thing seems to be going wrong, until…

It’s an amply charm­ing time-pass­er that has been cus­tom built to ser­vice fans of light enter­tain­ment singing com­pe­ti­tions while also pack­ing in plen­ty of winks and name checks to the icons of Euro­vi­sion past. Dan Stevens plays the mous­tache-twirling Russ­ian favourite Alexan­der Lem­tov whose song ​‘Lion of Love’ mix­es oper­at­ic vocals, Span­ish gui­tar and techno.

There are zero sur­pris­es in terms of plot, but the tear-jerk­ing finale man­ages to be more impact­ful and emo­tion­al than expect­ed. It’s like­ly down to McAdams, who has recent­ly dis­tin­guished her­self as a fine com­ic per­former with a range and com­mand of nuance that Fer­rell has or nev­er will be able to achieve. She’s fun­nier when doing noth­ing than Fer­rell is doing his usu­al yarping.