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Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga Movie Review

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is a 2020 comedy film directed by David Dobkin and starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams. It’s a flawed, but fun flick.

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“The elves went too far“

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It follows two Icelandic singers who get to represent their country at the Eurovision Song Contest. This movie is probably going to be an introduction to Eurovision for so many Americans who have never even heard of this competition. As a European myself, I am a big fan of Eurovision, so watching this movie was undoubtedly incredibly entertaining.

I’d expected a full-on parody of it going in. However, what I got is more of a sweet homage, which was an interesting, but lovely choice that spotlighted this competition and even marketed it for new audiences so well. The highlights were seeing all the details such as voting, campy performances and elaborate production values all brought to the screen in a meticulously detailed, very faithful manner. Seeing so many cameos of past Eurovision winners such as Conchita Wurst was also a delight.

But let’s talk about the overall plot, which is not all that great. This is your regular love story and a straight one, which was a very miscalculated choice for such a gay competition. The movie only has one gay character, thus feeling very unrealistic. It was a missed opportunity to focus so extensively on such a typical romance storyline instead of focusing more on other characters and subplots.

With that being said, there are some great plot points here. One is that ending. They end up singing a different song that celebrates their country and hometown beautifully, but instead of winning, they get disqualified for singing a different song, which is how it would really go down at this competition, so I appreciated that.

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I also really admired it being a huge love letter to Iceland. The elves subplot was amusing, eventually leading to such a hilarious payoff. Iceland is so well established along with its people, habits, clothing and so on. Celebrating a very small town was a wonderful sentiment as well.

Will Ferrell is at his game here. He is mostly believable as a singer, but he’s at times very funny with some of his lines and insults being hilarious. I am especially talking about his insults directed toward Americans, those were the funniest lines in the movie for sure. I also really liked Rachel McAdams who gets even more screen time than him and she’s wonderful throughout. The two share a solid chemistry, but again we’ve seen these romances many times before.

Pierce Brosnan is fun as the most handsome man in their town while Graham Norton was a good choice for a host, though Edinburgh being the host city was highly questionable to me. As for Dan Stevens, he plays this closeted Russian singer, and he’s quite charismatic and memorable in the role, but again more could have been done with this theme.

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Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga truly gets how Eurovision songs sound, resulting in many numbers being highly accurate in their vibe and a lot of fun. I loved the costumes, the sets and all places are so well utilized here. The dialogue and script needed some work, though, and the film is overlong at two hours.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is hurt by some missed opportunities when it comes to its plot points, the overall storyline, especially the romance, was unoriginal, and the length is excessive. However, this is still a very entertaining, at times even hilarious film (the elves payoff was so funny while the jabs at Americans were very amusing) that honors more than it parodies Eurovision through meticulously crafted sets, costumes and an accurate vibe of all musical numbers. It’s also a great love letter to Iceland as it utilizes on that setting stupendously.