Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga despite being a mouthful is also a 2020 Netflix exclusive Written by Will Ferrell and Andrew Steele and Directed by David Dobkin who made one of my favorite comedy films The Wedding Crashers. As Well as being the writer the film stars Ferrell alongside Rachel McAdams as Erickssong and Sigrit respectively to play the titular role Fire Saga and also has a supporting cast of Pierce Brosnan, Dan Stevens and Demi Lovato as well as a plethora of actual Eurovision song contest contestants.
So first of all I am a huge fan of Will Ferrel movies and in most of the films he is in he steals the show and some of his movies such as ‘Step Brothers’ and Talladega Nights are among my most quoted comedy movies. The thing is i don’t think Will Ferrell has made a ‘Great’ movie in a long time and that doesn’t mean the movies suck, they just don’t quite reach the standard that previous Ferrel movies have set. Especially the recent Holmes and Watson that’s on a whole other level of terrible.
So where does The Story Of Fire Saga fit in in terms of quality? Again the films isn’t one of his greats but it’s definitely isn’t one of his worst it’s just about on the higher end of average.
First of all the positive, if you’re going to make a movie about music you need to get the songs right and for me the movie pulls it off, i mean the songs are nowhere near masterpieces however they are fun and catchy and you can see a lot of effort went in to the music aspect in terms of lyrics and performances and they deliver some quite catchy songs.
Performances are also good, Dan Stevens is a standout as the Russian contestant Alexander Lemtov. I just enjoyed watching his performances and since technically he is the ‘Antagonist’ he has his own sympathetic arc that makes him one of the most interesting characters in the movie. Ferrell and McAdams are great as fire saga and their performances are also pretty good despite the fact that Rachel McAdams was dubbed and Will Ferrell cannot sing, but I think that is part of the joke.
My main concern with the movie is the story and runtime. This movie has like 3 different endings,and by that I mean I thought the film was almost over and then something else happened and it just kept going. Clocking in at around 2 hours the movie felt much much longer and I think it all has to do with pacing the movie has a slow-ish start then the contest picks up the pace a little then the final third just drags again.
Final Score.
Title:Average.
Eurovision song contest:The story of Fire Saga has pretty catchy songs and solid performances in places but drags out way too long for the story they want to tell.
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