The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the most popular song contests in the world. It is not very well known in the United States — I have to admit that prior to seeing this movie, I had never even heard of it — but for the rest of the world, it is essentially the World Cup of music. It began in the 1950s as a music festival designed to help unify Europe after the devastation of World War II, and it has since exploded into a pop culture sensation, as well as a recruiting ground for future music stars. (ABBA and Celine Dion were both discovered there.) Held in May every year, its centerpiece is a song competition between all the European states plus, for some reason, Australia and Israel. Approximately 200 million people tune in every year to see which country takes home the top prize.
With its extravagant pageantry, earnestness, gathering of easily mockable countries such as Moldova and Liechtenstein, and wealth of bad music, Eurovision is such perfect material for a Will Ferrell movie that if it hadn’t already existed, he might have made it up. But now, Ferrell fans who fondly remember his bravura performance of Andrea Bocelli’s “Por Ti Volare” at the end of Step Brothers (or his performance of “Afternoon Delight” in Anchorman) finally have their wish — a full-fledged music movie parody directed by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers), written by Ferrell and Andrew Steele, and streamable on Netflix for free (assuming you’re a subscriber). What could be a better lockdown present than that?
In Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Ferrell and co-star Rachel McAdams play the felicitously named Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, unheralded Icelandic singers who, with the help of a small miracle, win their country’s national song contest and go on to represent Iceland in Eurovision. The movie begins in the small town of Husavik, Iceland, in April 1974, where little Lars is watching Eurovision with his extended family, who look so Icelandic one would be forgiven for thinking they’d taken part in a Viking raid that morning. When team Sweden comes on, Lars gets a little too excited for his own good. “He is going to sing in the Eurovision contest one day,” one of the family members says to the group. “I’d rather be dead,” says his father. And so, like many biopic and mockumentary heroes, little Lars Erickssong must overcome not only great odds to achieve his artistic dreams but the disapproval of his family as well.
We then flash forward to the present day, where Lars, bedecked in full Viking splendor, and his childhood friend Sigrit, dressed in a chrome jacket and white dress, are recording “Volcano Man,” a hilarious music video about, well, a volcano man — whatever that is. As the story continues, the standard plot obstacles are placed in front of Lars and Sigrit like hurdles in front of Olympic sprinters: a father (Lars’s father, Erick, played by a silver-haired Pierce Brosnan) who is less than enthusiastic about his son’s artistic pursuits and tells him to “move on from his childish dreams”; a mother (Sigrit’s) who disapproves of her daughter’s relationship with said struggling artist; the police, who arrest Lars for ringing a clock tower bell in a nonemergency situation; doubting villagers; ambiguous sexual tension; unhelpful ghosts; and an Icelandic music establishment that is not exactly invested in the pair’s success.
After Lars and Sigrit, playing in an obscure Icelandic band with the Wagnerian name “Fire Saga,” sing their strangely catchy Eurovision song submission “Jaja Ding Dong” in a crowded portside bar, Lars is upset with the audience’s lack of appreciation for their art. “I can’t handle this!” he exclaims to Sigrit on the dock outside of the bar. “Every time I try to show them what real music is, they laugh!” Yes, but how could they not laugh at a song called “Jaja (pronounced “yaya”) Ding Dong”?
By a stroke of luck, Lars and Sigrit are offered a chance to compete in Iceland’s national singing contest in Reykjavik. Their musical number is as disastrous as one of the worst set-pieces from Spinal Tap, but no matter — through another stroke of luck (which includes an inexplicably exploding party boat), they are declared the winners of Iceland’s national contest and head off to Eurovision, held that year in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Away from Iceland, the real fun begins. Lars and Sigrit gallivant through Edinburgh like country bumpkins experiencing a big city for the first time. They contemplate a romance, but Lars says they should hold off. “We need to concentrate on the music.” “We can make love and music,” says Sigrit. “No,” says Lars. “We can’t.” Their Russian rivals try to befriend them, but Lars pushes them away. “We don’t need friends,” he tells Sigrit, who appears to be somewhat attracted to Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens), the pretty-boy Russian singer who is favored to win Eurovision. “We need to win.” As he reiterates to the beguiling Greek singer Mita Xenakis (Melissanthi Mahut) at a party hosted by Alexander at one of his many estates, “I have to prove to all of Iceland, and my extremely handsome father, that I have not wasted my life.” As rehearsals in Edinburgh progress, however, a love rectangle involving Alexander, Sigrit, Mita, and Lars begins to develop that threatens to drive Sigrit and Lars apart.
Not everything in Eurovision Song Contest works. Some of the set pieces (like an impromptu musical number sung by all the guests at Alexander’s party) are too over the top, even for a movie that’s all about maximalist gags. Other plot elements are too predictable. Not all of the jokes land. But it’s all held together by Ferrell. His unique physicality, his dexterous voice, and his protean face have rarely been put to better use. Eurovision Song Contest does not show him at the level he achieved in Anchorman or Talladega Nights. But in Lars Erickssong, Ferrell has once again done what he’s been doing since 1998’s A Night at the Roxbury: creating indelible comedic characters who we’ll be quoting endlessly for years to come. Assuming we can get “Jaja Ding Dong” out of our heads first.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a writer from western Massachusetts and a Ph.D. candidate at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the author of the novel A Single Life and the forthcoming Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema.
