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Like pretty much everyone, the stream of new movies we are interested in has slowed significantly. However, new things are still squeaking out every now and then. Today we’re going to be talking about Netflix’s new film, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga! But that’s not all! We’re also going to talk about the 2004 sex comedy Eurotrip. You can see how word association got us here. But we found an unexpected quality that both films share. More on this later.
Eurovision was a bit of a surprise for us. While we love Will Ferrell as a human and SNL actor, his zanier feature length movies don’t always hit for us. Plus, being American, Eurovision (the actual event) isn’t something we’re all that familiar with outside of seeing clips on Tumblr. The only guarantee for us was Rachel McAdams, who we ALWAYS love. Wil’s first viewing was sort of by accident. His brother was watching it in the same room, and while his initial reaction was “wow this is really stupid”, an hour later he found himself still in the room and actually enjoying it! So the SIWTS team sat down and watched it together and we loved it!
Next we re-watched Eurotrip for the first time in over a decade. Partly because of the Euro word association, but mostly out of curiosity to see if it holds up. And it sort of does! I mean, it came out in 2004 so not everything would fly by today’s standards.
But this brings us to that unexpected shared quality between both movies: sweetness. While some jokes are a little off color, there’s not a cynical bone in Eurotrip‘s body and it’s just a fun sorta coming-of-age comedy that hands out happy endings left and right. And it’s the same with Eurovision. It’s definitely a comedy, but it has an earnestness the we didn’t see coming. From the outside it looks like it could be making fun of the outlandish song contest, but in reality the movie is more of a love letter to it. And it lands its theme of family and the importance of not forgetting your roots very well. It’s just a hair too long.
This wound up being a fun and positive double feature. We were thankful Eurotrip held up as well as it did, despite falling apart late in the game. We didn’t want to have to confront our past selves about the things we used to find funny. And Eurovision will probably be on our top ten list for the year, but to be fair it is a pretty thin year. What did you think of Eurovision? What was your favorite song? Let us know over on Twitter! For now get ready to sing along with us on today’s Eurorific episode of So…I’m Watching This Show!
