So Europe has this thing that I guess you'd call the Olympics of whatever "American Idol" is, called Eurovision, where each country in Europe sends a contestant to the contest, which is held in the country of the prior winner, and they perform original music and the same panel that picks the singer in each country votes on their country's behalf.

This contest gave the world ABBA, apparently, and gave Will Ferrell an idea. Like most of what Will Ferrell puts on the screen, it's a bad idea. I don't get the appeal of laughing at him being a moron. What I've seen of Anchorman and Elf has not impressed me. The movie I most liked with him in it was "The Other Guys" in which the central point of his character was that he was annoying and obnoxious and you were supposed to get why Mark Wahlberg got so annoyed with him, and share Wahlberg's bemusement at his managing to land a wife who looks like Eva Mendes.

So will Ferrell is Lars, an Icelandic fisherman's son and parking enforcement officer, who watched ABBA performing at Eurovision as a small child in 1974 and was inspired to become a musician. And he's not good, of course, because this is a Will Ferrell star vehicle. And in what appears to be 2020 or so, he's still trying to make it as a Eurovision contestant. Although some of the people in charge of this sort of thing in Iceland are not even thrilled about the idea of the contest, especially since they would be financially unable to fulfill the duties of the winning country. But through shenanigans not unrelated to that desire not to win, Lars' act, a duo called Fire Saga, with his long-time female friend Sigrit, played by Rachel McAdams, who has a long-standing crush on him, but they have never consummated. They've had this thing for LONGER THAN I HAVE BEEN ALIVE (or Rachel McAdams, for that matter, as she was probably not born in 1974, when young Sigrit was inspired by little Lars' enthusiasm for Eurovision), and are apparently waiting until they get their big break to move forward with the relationship. And they might be half-siblings.

I suspect if you are familiar with Eurovision, this movie is a lot more enjoyable. Some of the stuff seems like in-jokes, and the music might be a parody of European contemporary pop or an homage, or it might just suck. I couldn't tell you. Dan Stevens, who tried to unconvincingly play an American prospector in "Call of the Wild" and a French cursed nobleman in "Beauty and the Beast" is a Russian singer, of ambiguously depicted sexuality, who might or might not be putting the moves on Sigrit. The Greek contestant, for some reason, takes his orders and attempts to seduce Lars to give him a clear shot.

And it's about as predictable as a movie about two singers secretly in love with each other in a big singing contest gets.

The amusing things in the movie are:
- Lars' (and possibly Sigrit's) father, played by Pierce Brosnan, is the typical stern, disapproving father (but when you're in your FIFTIES, as anyone who watched Eurovision in 1974 has to be, that should not be an issue anymore; your life is more than half over, deal with it), but there is a running gag that he's so good looking he's slept with every woman in the town, so they're all probably siblings.
- Sigrit's superstitious propitiation of tiny elves she believes influence fortune
- A song of Fire Saga's that they hate but which is wildly popular in their town and which the townsfolk fanatically prefer to any of the pop music covers or original music Fire Saga performs. It's simple, with a catchy tune and double entendre lyrics that sound like ABBA tried to write their own version of "My Ding-a-ling".

A not-so-funny attempt at a running joke is Lars' hostility to a group of young American tourists and their obliviousness to his hatred. I think the gag is that Icelanders are so polite that his attempts to insult them come off stilted and robbed of any malice, or else an effort to amuse an American audience by presenting what Europeans think of as American stereotypes.

This is the kind of movie that Rachel McAdams should have played the same role in 10-15 years ago, and Will Ferrell is WAY too old for, and even his character. It feels like he's the 800 pound gorilla whom no one ever dared to challenge by pointing out that his character is clearly the same age as he, given his size in 1974, and the main events of the movie should have taken place no less than 20 years ago. With a guy who is not clearly in his 50s.