Avis Metacritic

Eurovision gives us an inspired and hilarious match between subject and stars, all driven by melodrama: The glorious, over-the-top theatricality of the song contest makes an ideal stage for Ferrell’s brand of high-highs and low-lows.

The jokes in the sweet and silly Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga don't always pop as well as its songs.

One way or the other, the biggest issue with “The Story of Fire Saga” is that most of it is just too limp and anodyne to register.

If ever a comedy cried out for tight 85-minute treatment that keeps the gags pinging fast enough to disguise the thin sketch material at its core, it's this hit-or-miss two-hour feature.

At heart, “Eurovison” seems content to be more dumb rom-com than sharp music satire.

Fire Saga manages glimmers of fun through its laborious two-hour runtime when it sits the hell down and plays some fun Eurovision-y songs, but there are too many false notes in between to justify trucking through the tedium to find them. Just hit up the soundtrack when it comes out and bop along to some goofy songs.

The problem is that Eurovision Song Contest can’t dream of capturing the real-life weirdness of Eurovision. And while there’s some chuckles that can be drawn out of McAdams and Ferrell lip syncing a surprisingly catchy song while running through a hamster wheel, there’s only so much fun that can be made of a televised singing contest where weirder things have happened.

In Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Ferrell's typical schtick is on full display, but wears incredibly thin in this overlong comedy.

The movie is not a disaster, just weirdly pointless.

It’s a badly shot one-joke movie that sits there and goes thud.