Ferrell's career continues to slide

Rating: 5/10 (4 July 2020)

Age has really caught up to Will Ferrell unfortunately - and I'm not in any way talking about his looks. I'm talking about his acting ability and his ability to be funny. The man was almost indisputably the funniest person working in Hollywood a decade ago. These days he can go an entire film without getting a single laugh out of me. It feels like he plays it incredibly safe these days, preferring to lean on PG-13 movies and safe scripts. I understand it's a very difficult time to be a comedian with the world being so easy to offend right now, but I really wish people like him would just ignore that noise and get back to making the fabulous movies that he was in the 2000s.
Looking past the comedy, the movie didn't work for me as a narrative either. It was extremely clunky. There were many many scenes that could've (and should've) been left on the cutting room floor. Ferrell wrote this himself, and he's actually written some very fine scripts over the years, but this was not one of them. It felt like a kids movie, aimed at adults.
Everything that was great about 'Pitch Perfect' in terms of combining heart, humour and fun was missing here. The music was actually okay and probably the strongest part of 'Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga'. There were some catchy singles along the way that were a pleasure to have replace the clunky dialogue. Rachel McAdams actually went a long way towards saving the film too. She gives her best in every scene, despite her clearly knowing some of the things she was being asked to do were ridiculous and not going to come across well onscreen. It isn't enough to save this mess though. I can't recommend this one.