Movie starts off in 1974 with the death of a young Lar's mother. He was sad but then turned around upon watching the band ABBA singing on the television. He was hooked into music thereafter together with a childhood friend Sigrit.
In the present day, both are still at music and they now have a band called Fire Saga. Lars (played by Will Ferrell) had to endure his father's disdain for his music with Sigrit was the only one who believed in him. Lar's dream was to win the Eurovision Song Contest and this time around, they were able to qualify at the Songvakeppnin, a pre selection show for Eurovision.
As like in all their performances, they are bad luck on stage and failed miserably in their first try at Songvakeppnin. But sometimes good luck comes to those who persevered. In a good tragedy if there was one, in between shows, the whole contestants except Lars and Sigrit, was instantly killed in a boat party. With them surviving, they were now deemed to be the winners of Songvakeppnin and earned the right to represent Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The event was held in Scotland and Lars was excited with this opportunity that he created many things from their usual routine. He created new costumes which turned out to be failures and arranged their competition song with a new vibe coming off from a Korean musical arranger that Sigrit both didn't like.
Despite all their misadventures and trials in the competition, they were able to overcome them and eventually find out more about themselves and who they are to each other.
Another feel good movie we have here with Will Ferrell. Will has been known for comedies for a long time and its not surprisingly that he does comedy well here. With his other films, he specializes in slapstick comedies and this one movie is no exception. It had the usual slapstick moments but what's surprising was, this one had less of that compared to most of his films.
Jokes were mostly cerebral and he was cracking jokes or sarcasm for that matter that still elicits laughter in us. Very not like the Will Ferrell we all know and we liked it. By far this is the only movie that we thought that he was truly great. We liked his previous films, but after watching this, we now like to bury them all into oblivion and stick this one up on the top shelf.
Rachel McAdams was likewise great here although we think they lacked that chemistry between them, both however delivered their performances well together. Just enough to make us believe that there was love between them since they were kids.
The movie overall was great but somehow we were distracted with their accents. Both had to sound Icelandic in their delivery of their english lines and they were good at first. Midway until the end however, we thought they were using scottish accents and not icelandic anymore. We were always pre occupied with their dialogues trying to hear their accents all throughout the film that sometimes we lose track of the storyline.
That's the only flaw we saw big time that great affected our viewing. But since you just wanted to be entertained, their accents are enough to watch them and be entertained by them.
Oh and don't forget about the Iceland landscapes, they were located in a remote area of it so expect breathtaking views. Currently showing on Netflix as of this writing so better catch this movie there.
netflix
