“Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga: A Movie with a Ridicolously Long Name” may be easily mistaken as a trash film with a predictable and cliche “winning a contest but also love” story, well in some ways it is, but it doesn’t take itself seriously at all, instead parodying the genre and Eurovision, generating somewhat interesting moments but not reaching a “sarcasm” level of great comedy. (Woah how was that one sentense?)
As someone who have watched past 5 years of Eurovision, the parodies of song entries are somewhat amusing and on point, vaguely highliting many’s opinion that Eurovision entries are becoming very similar and repetitive. These performances give the vibes of “Love Love Peace Peace (ESC 2016 Finals)”. The hamster wheel parodies Ukraine’s 2014 entry “Tick-tock”: why the hell does a song contest have such a redicolous contraption as its set piece?
The on-stage scenes are pretty interesting: they are actually filmed on the real 2019 ESC stage in Tel Aviv, using the style (and probably the crew) of actual ESC. As ESC broadcasts are widely regarded as the best broadcasts visually, this is definately a plus. However the overuse of steadicam 360-around-the-subject shots are dizzying.
Music-wise it’s pretty mediocre, except for “Husavik” being quite stunning in-the-moment with over-the-top ESC visuals. Even though “Double Trouble” is very likely a parody of the bland ESC entries of today, it is painful to listen to the second time in the movie.
The Icelandic landscape shots are nice enough, and the whole thing feels a bit like a Iceland Travel Commercial.
Also, add this to the list of movies of “Russians are automatically antagonists because they are Russians”. The antagonist russian in this film is pretty cute tho.
In the first ever year which ESC got cancelled, the movie certainly comes at the right time, filling the craves of many Eurovision fans. Even for non-ESC fans it’s a movie with sparkling moments of amusement and brilliance, although with bland & boring ones filling the gap. Welp, my time isn’t valuable enough for me to label this as “a waste of 2 hours” anyways.
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