This movie only got to my attention when I read about it in the internet with the lead cast a man quite famous for his comedic movies, Will Ferrell. Without further ado, let us find out if the movie was indeed entertaining.
Brief Story Line
Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell - Daddy's Home 2, Mega Mind etc) was a middle aged man who still live with his father Erick (Pierce Brosnan - Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Die Another Day etc) while dreaming of winning the Eurovision Song Contest. With his childhood best friend Sigrit Ericksdóttir (Rachel McAdams - Game Night, Mean Girls etc) who had always had a crush on him, Lars formed a duo band called Fire Saga and sometimes play music gig in their home town of Húsavík, Iceland.
After years of trying, Fire Saga somehow managed to be invited for the Iceland pre-selection of 2020 Eurovision contest. And due to some outrageous luck they were selected to represent the country in the contest itself. Lars and Sigrit later met with contestants from various countries, among others the favorite to win Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens - Beauty and the Beast live version, Colossal etc) from Russia and Mita Xenakis (Melissanthi Mahut) from Greece. With so many challenges the Fire Saga had to face, what would happen to this duo? Find them all in this ridiculous movie just for fun.
End of Brief Story Line
It has been a while since I saw this kind of comedy movie. I am quite a fan of Will Ferrell and other actors of his generation such as Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Luke & Owen Wilson (nicknamed Frat Pack) with my favorites of hilarious comedy movies like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Wedding Crashers, Zoolanders etc. So when I noticed Ferrell's name and read the brief synopsis, I did not hesitate to give this a try.
Just like in other similar movies, the story was not that complicated. It was basically a drama with some of absurd comedy that could give me few laughter (not a lot but quite sufficient). For a movie that was categorized as musical comedy, I thought the amount of singing was significant enough but it did not make this a total musical like Mary Poppins Returns, The Greatest Showman or La La Land where almost every 10 or 15 minutes there would be singing. There was only 1 brief song-a-long where many former Eurovision actual contestants performed wonderfully.
The performance of Will Ferrell here was just what I expected of him, filled with his clown-ish style, ridiculous comments and his classic expressions. Few of my favorite scenes were the ending of Volcano Man music video, or the one involving Ferrell and the elves. This film actually reminded me a lot of his other movie that I still could laugh out loud when re-watching it, Blades of Glory. In case you have not seen that one, you could give it a try as I thought it has more slapstick comedic moments if you are into that. Anyway in here what I did not really like was Rachel McAdam's character in the early stage where she was just this googly eyed woman having years of crush with Lars, although subsequently it got better. But her singing performance was quite magnificent (I understand that it was harmonization with former 2006 contestant Molly Sandén).
The one character that I really liked was Alexander who was played brilliantly by Dan Stevens. I did not recognize him at first as this colorful Russian singer though his powerful singing performance was fantastic. The contest itself was given quite large screen time, though it was not up to the level of the hit TV series Glee. Btw, the duration might be a bit of a hurdle since it was quite long having 123 minutes including the closing credits (without having mid or post end credit scenes). Oh there was also Demi Lovato as fabulous Iceland singer Katiana Lindsdóttir. And the beautiful scenery of Iceland and Scotland were also a real treat for me who has never been to Europe.
Overall this was a fun movie. There was not much surprise, not a lot of new creativity but if you are looking for some laughs without overthinking stuff, and if you are fans of the type of comedy usually provided by Will Ferrell, then I think you would be able to enjoy it. However, if I compare with his other works, I thought Anchorman or Blades of Glory were better than this one. So if you want to release some stress, this could be an option.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Notes:
Eurovision song contest is an annual international song competition, held every year by the European Broadcasting Union since 1956 with participants representing primarily European countries
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