Review from a long-time fan of the contest

Rating: 7/10 (26 June 2020)

As someone who not only follows Eurovision, but also national finals and the events surrounding it, I was very curious on how this film would turn out. There are a lot of misconceptions about ESC, as well as many dated associations (for instance, overblown glitter and mockery has (mostly) been left in 2000s). I love Will Farrell as a comedian, even though his last film, Holmes & Watson, was indeed really bad. Thankfully, ESC: The Story of the Fire Saga fares much better. I'll break down my review in two parts. First, analyze it as a film on it's own merits. Second, to see how it looks like as an homage to ESC.
As a film, it's your standard story of an underdog dreaming big and seeking for approval. I found Lars, Farrell's character, slightly too selfish and rude to root for, but his partner Sigrid is much more likable. Farrell is still, as always, a very good comedic actor. Rachel McAdams really gives her best and easily gives one of the highlights of the film. The other standout is Dan Stevens as the Russian singer Lemtov. He was really enjoying himself and I liked how the film treated his struggles. Some of the plot-points were fairly predictable and tad generic to the genre of comedy. Some jokes were funny, but some felt a bit flat (his ''disliking'' of Americans, for instance). Interestingly, the inclusion of Icelandic folklore somehow works well. If Lars was more likable character, I'd enjoy his redemption arc even more. Sure, he does some right moves in the end, but I think some of his impulses are still tad selfish. Even so, I liked how they ''lost the contest, but won people's hearts''.
As an homage, it works okay. There are several inaccuracies of how the Eurovision, or Icelandic National final works, so here we go:

Semi-finals don't have a jury voting sequence. Only ten qualifiers are announced in random order to avoid knowing the presumed winner before the big night.
Spain, as a pre-qualified ''Big Five'' country would never be in the semi-final. Same would apply to the UK, Germany, France and Italy.
In the end, Lars comes on the stage and decides to change the song. In the actual contest, it would have been virtually impossible to do so, as all the music background is pre-recorded. They would indeed be disqualified for doing so, though.
Both the Eurovision stage and Songvakeppnin (The Icelandic national finals) stage look really small when compared to the actual stages of the last decade.
Songvakeppnin usually also has two semi-finals with six songs each.
There is an astonishingly low amount of security there, as Lars could just easily go inside in such a short period of time.

There are also some things regarding the contest this film does right:

The songs chosen to stand-in ESC entries are pretty solid and with a slight shade of satire (which any good comedy should have) aren't implausible to see in the actual Eurovision stage. However, perhaps with the exception of Sigrid's final song, they would probably be considered too much of a gimmick to actually win. However, a top 10 result for Russia with televoting alone would be more than plausible.
Worth noting, the Belorussian band has a song and staging which is a direct nod to the winners of Eurovision 2006, Lordi (even though they were Finnish).
The Greek staging is heavily inspired by the staging of Moldovan representative of 2016, Lidia Isac and Ukraine's national final winner of 2019, Maruv.
There are some really nice cameos from previous Eurovision winners and contestants and are worth checking out. For instance, Portuguese winner of ESC 2017, Salvador Sobral, is featured as a street musician in Edinburgh, while his song, ''Amar pelos dois'' is playing (a hilariously mismatched song to the goofy plot which occurs during it). Also, previous contestants John Lundvik (Sweden, 2019), Elina Nechayeva (Estonia, 2018), Anna Odobescu (Moldova, 2019), Bilal Hassani (France, 2019), Jessy Matador (France, 2010) and winners Loreen (Sweden, 2012), Netta (Israel, 2018), Conchita Wurst (Austria, 2014), Alexander Rybak (Norway, 2009, also representing them in 2018) and Jamala (Ukraine, 2016) are featured in the party singalong scene.
British anchorman Graham Norton appears as himself and with pretty accurate sharp irony describes what he sees.
William Adams, the founder of Wiwibloggs, official Eurovision fan-site, also appears in the reporters' room.
Jon Ola Sand, the actual chief executive of the contest is featured in a cameo, but isn't played by himself. Still, a nice reference.
Even though nothing as huge as the hamster wheel (btw, a reference to Ukraine 2014) falling off stage did happen in Eurovision, there was an incident in 2018 where a stage invader interrupted the song of the British representative SuRie and she bravely continued to sing the rest of the song. It brought her huge respect in the ESC community.

Overall, I did enjoy this film and I hope it brings Eurovision closer to the general audiences. I'd like if Lars' personality was a bit nicer. I'd also prefer if the cameos were a bit more scattered throughout the film and if they had actual characters to work on. Still, it's an enjoyable film on it's own and I would recommend it.