Movie Nation

Whatever the craftsmanship, the skill with which the story is told, a documentary is only as riveting as its subject — be it some odd business or hobby, or a character it’s built around.

And that holds true for mockumentaries, scripted films meant to look like a non-fiction piece of reality, as well.

The first hour of “Skyman,” a portrait of an Apple Valley, California man haunted by an alien “visit” as a child, convinced that “visitor” is returning on his 40th birthday, is overwhelmed by the banality of the ordinary, working class and seemingly deluded life whose story it tells.

A generally flat performance doesn’t help when we’re seeing and hearing interviews meant to flesh in how Carl Merryweather (Michael Selle) lives, how his life has turned out and how much this event when he was ten shaped his life.

A psychologist tries to explain the mental traits of someone claiming to have met or been abducted or even “probed” by aliens, vouch, someone who “may be just a little bit lost.” A friend and a former employer vouch for Carl’s character even if they note he’s always been a little off.

And the sister he lives with (Nicolette Sweeney) alternately defends him and indulges him.

But the film hangs on actual interviews with Carl, and a third act finale that finally gives away the artistry and suspense-building skill of “Blair Witch Project” co-director Dan Myrick, who delivers an ending that can’t up for the first 70 minutes.

Because what comes through in that long, tedious buildup — sitting down with Carl and his sister, following Carl to a UFO convention in McMinnville, Oregon (an annual May highlight of the McMinnville calendar), trailing Carl as he buys gear he needs and preps for his birthday “reunion” — is a sense of a documentary filmmaker who doesn’t know the best questions to ask, what to leave in, what to edit out, and how much patience the average viewer has with watching “filler.”

See Carl unplug to fridge in his hotel room because he’s “sensitive to electromagnetic current.” OK, we get it. Do we need the set-up of following him down the hall, ducking into his room, and everything that comes before that payoff?

See Carl clumsily question a published “visitor” expert on his book about arcane details of the weather, exact location, etc. of that man’s experience. The guy can’t recall every specific, perhaps making a point Carl threw out there to excuse alien encounter narratives, that “there’s truth in the inconsistencies.”

He’s obsessed. We also get that. And the colorful cosplay going on all around him at the festival (Darth Vader, in a kilt, on a unicycle playing “Scotland the Brave” on his bagpipes) isn’t distracting him.

There’s dead time in and around every introductory scene, and everything that doesn’t drive the “They’re coming back for me” narrative makes “Skyman” — 10 year-old Carl’s description of who he saw  — feel like it’s ambling through quicksand.

His sister (more animated, conflicted and revealing) confesses that “For the longest time, I thought it was a cry for help.”

The occasional moment of drama from her, the camera-caught side-eyes of his equally-indulgent pal (Faleolo Alailima) don’t make up for making us sit through outtakes which a “real” documentarian would have left on the cutting room floor.

“This gas station has the best beef jerky!”

Selle finally makes Carl interesting enough to watch in that finale. But every scene he underplays before that sucks the life right out of “Skyman.” Embittered encounters with locals he’s known all his life, a pointless visit to the Integratron and other sites shown in the “real” UFO doc “Calling all Earthlings,” about UFO cultist George Wellington Van Tassel, desert treks to bury this or set up that are all played in the same flat note.

Knowing that to be the case, you’d think the editing strategy would have been different. Knowing the subject matter and genre (UFO docs are almost as common as Holocaust recollections), you’re not going to “surprise” the viewer with “I was visited when I was 10 years old.” Why burn so much screen time establishing how “ordinary” Carl is, other than this signature, all-consuming event of his past?

There are desert shots, night-vision treks and a few images that stand out. And as I mentioned, the finale eventually delivers something of a payoff.

But as alien encounter documentaries or mockumentaries go, “Skyman” is boringly earthbound.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity, smoking, alcohol

Cast: Michael Selle, Nicolette Sweeney, Faleolo Alailima

Credits: Written and directed by Daniel Myrick. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:33

It’s a common theme in fantasy fiction stories that deal with immortality, the idea that living forever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

But you don’t have to add the supernatural to learn that lesson. Just live long enough, bury a few friends, lovers and relatives. Bury a few more. And then more, still.

“Lola Igna,” the titular heroine of today’s “Around the World with Neflix (© pending)” offering, knows a little something about that. She’s 118 and might be — if the enterprise keeping track of such statistics will confirm it — not just “the oldest living grandmother in the Philippines, but the oldest living grandmother in the world!”

The film is a charming, almost serene Filipino tale that starts off in “Waking Ned Devine” territory and wanders into something almost profound, and certainly disquieting.

Because it’s all fun and games with a mayor, giddy at announcing the news, reassuring the reporters gathered for the press conference that “It’s not about money. It’s about the title!” When he adds (in, English, Spanish and Filipino) that yes, the company that compiles this stat pays out $50,000 per year of life as a prize, and that it’s, oh, $5.9 million US dollars is what that comes to, that sets up the movie’s expectations.

Lola Igna (Angie Ferro) is nonplussed. She gives a veggie diet, fresh air and “coconut wine” as the secrets to her long life. But asked if there’s anything left she’d like to do in her life, her answer rattles the grinning press corps.

“One event I am looking forward to is my death! I want to die, already!”

Peeing herself for emphasis, when her descendants won’t let her leave the stage when she’s ready to go, we get the idea that she’s serious.

But her family is tickled at the prize and the notoriety. Great granddaughter Nida (Maria Isabel Lopez) starts selling T-shirts and coffee mugs in the village shop. Great great grandson Bok (Royce Cabrera) starts leading tours of selfie-stick equipped visitors out to see the ancient woman.

And then the mysterious Tim (Yves Flores) shows up. He annoys Nida and the other shopkeepers, records video of himself doing this and that. And then he shows up at Lola Igna’s rice paddy hut and says he’s the son of her estranged great granddaughter.

But as he asks her permission to charge his phone, to vlog, to interview her and video record her life, we wonder.

Director and co-writer Eduardo W. Roy Jr. maintains that mystery for a while, but does more with the “ticking clock” of this story. An aged peasant woman, who talks to her decades-dead husband at every meal, who keeps a shrine to every loved one she’s long over her 118 years of life, is up for a big payoff. And all she really wants to do is to shake off this mortal coil.

The film’s style is meditative, with his heroine’s annoyance at the tourists, resignation to her fate, and just a whimsy about her, driving the narrative.

Tim, whatever his motives, falls under her spell. We do, too.

Roy has conjured up a corner of the world outsiders rarely see, a Philippines far removed from sexy cities and sophistication, and her immerses us in it.

And Ferro, a staple of Filipino TV and film for some fifty years, is documentary-real in the title role, warm but wary, wry but saddened by every loss her long life has let her see.

She wins our trust by making us laugh, and then uses that trust to break our hearts. It’s a terrific performance, a little piece of screen immortality brought on by playing someone who knows better than to wish that fate — immortality — on anyone.

(Eduardo Roy Jr’s “Ordinary People” is just as good, and on Netflix.)

MPAA Rating: Tv-14, profanity, alcohol, deaths

Cast: Angie Ferro, Yves Flores, Meryll Soriano, Maria Isabel Lopez and Royce Cabrera.

Credits: Directed by Eduardo W. Roy, Jr. script by Margarette Labrador and Eduardo W. Roy Jr.  A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53

Old Rule — any movie or TV show in the horror genre that uses an electronic harpsichord in its score MUST be a comedy. “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters” forever made it so.

New Rule — All zombie movies should be Korean. None of this Atlanta-area zombie soap “Insomnia-inducing Dead” nonsense. Farce, horror thriller or rom-com, if it’s got “Living Dead,” leave that to the K-Pop K-horror experts.

When it opened in South Korea and parts of Asia, it played under the title “The Odd Family.” Here in the U.S., earning a virtual release July 1, it is “Zombie for Sale.” The only Western “improvement” to this laugh-out-loud-start-to-finish romp is a needed title change.

Sure, it’s a lowbrow genre picture with only the barest hints of “moral parable for our times” about it. But the debut feature of writer-director Lee Min-Jae is a hoot; cleverly conceived, amusingly-executed, comically satisfying.

A family running a failing service station in remote Poonsang has turned to grifting to stay afloat. The towtruck driving son (Jae-yeong Jung) leaves tacks on the road, motorists wreck and “I just happened to be passing by” leads to a tow, over-priced repairs (“Cash only!”) and lasting shame. If only the Park clan wasn’t so…shameless.

But elsewhere in Korea, an insulin replacement drug test has gone terribly wrong. The Parks don’t know this when they run into — literally — their first zombie.

The walking dead dude (Ga-ram Jung) hasn’t gotten the hang of things. He staggers between a couple of distracted, gossipy teens, moaning and lurching. Lunging for Park daughter Hae-gul (Soo-kyung Lee) just as city slicker sibling Min-gul (Nam-gil Kim) comes home is another #zombiefail.

That’s how he gets hit by tow-truck driver Joon-gul, who is pretty squeamish for a mercenary con-artist.

“I’m too much of a pussy to look” is funny in Korean, or in (English) subtitles.

The tone is set and the apocalypse is on its way. Except there are some new wrinkles here. The zombie bites their cranky, card-cheat dad (In-hwan Park) and the infection makes him young and virile. All his card-playing cronies want a bite.

“Line up. Cash only! Nothing’s free!”

Hae-gul develops a crush on this zombie, the one “pet” (she keeps rabbits) she doesn’t seem to be able to kill. She serves him cabbage, coating it with ketchup to simulate “BRAINS!”

Like America’s pandemic deniers, these yokels from the “stupid boonies” of Korea don’t “get” incubation periods and the like, even when their sophisticated city sibling tries to explain them. No good can come from this new “business model.”

The cast performs the leaps from deadpan and doltish to manic with aplomb. Movies like this invite you to pick a “favorite,” and mine is morose Nam-joo (Ji-won Uhm), the truck-driver’s VERY pregnant wife, who always keeps a frying pan in her hand.

Just. In. Case.

Director Lee doles out giggle-inducing slo-mo and easy-laugh sound effects (from “The Six Million Dollar Man,” for instance) as he serves up the action beats.

This is a “Zombie Aware” universe, where “Ever heard of the ‘Living Dead?’ They’re ZOMBIES” is all the explanation anybody needs for what’s happening.

Here’s something I have NEVER seen before in a screen treatment of characters using the Internet to save them. Min-gul, the “smart” one and guy who “was right all along,” does a web search for “Zombies, what they’re doing and what can be done.”

The web page gives him search results, BENEATH a pop up ad for ties. Yes, even in the Zombie Apocalypse, it’s comforting to know that the web is still tracking our search history and trying to sell us crap.

It isn’t long before a “Zombie Survival Guide” (book) is whipped out.

The energy flags in the middle acts, the logic and “rules” seem fluid (the movie breaks them, at will). But as “Zombie for Sale” manages a wickedly funny sprint to the finish, one thinks of “Train to Pusan” and its upcoming sequel and one remembers that one “new rule” that matters.

No pop culture gives “The Living Dead” their due like Korea.

MPAA Rating: unrated, gory violence, profanity

Cast: Jae-yeong Jeong, Soo-kyung Lee, Ga-ram Jung, Nam-gil Kim, Ji-won Uhm and In-Hwan Park

Credits: Written and directed by Lee Min-Jae. A CineZoo—Arrow Video (streaming in July) release.

Running time: 1:50

The recent release of “Mr. Jones,” a drama about the Welsh reporter who broke the story of the man-made famine Stalin imposed on Ukraine in the 1930s, is framed by journalist, critic and novelist George Orwell’s writing of “Animal Farm,” his scathing satire of Stalinism and totalitarianism.

Orwell, in the film, was an idealistic socialist-journalist who met Gareth Jones just as his story was about to break, and the aspiring novelist had his eyes opened by what he learned. Stumbling across the original, moving and generally faithful 1954 British animated version of “Animal Farm” on Tubi (one of several platforms where you can see it), I rewatched it to see what I could pick up from Orwell’s parable, watching it anew in a very different era from when it was created.

This animated classic was CIA-backed, pushed into production as the Cold War had moved from warm to hot. The Korean War, Soviet Russia stealing A-bomb secrets and exporting revolution all over what would come to be known as The Developing World, backing communist parties in war-ravaged Europe, you could see why the CIA would be interested in a little cinematic pushback.

The film’s messaging is blunt. But watching it now there are subtleties which perhaps the spy agency’s propaganda-purchasers didn’t have in mind when they got behind it.

The one screenwriter I can vouch for might be part of the explanation for that. I met American filmmaker Borden Mace as he was shooting a labor documentary, “The Uprising of 1934,” in the ’90s. That film was about wildcat textile strikes brutally put down across the South, scarring the region and setting back unions here for decades and decades. Mace made a lot of movies like that. He was an old-school post-Stalinist leftist filmmaker, or would go on to become one after his “story consulting” on “Animal Farm.”

What the film, like the novel, lays bare is the inherently corrupt, greedy and venal nature of humanity. “All animals are equal” morphs into “But some are more equal than others” as the cunning “pigs” among us seek more luxury, comfort, food and power, once they get control of government (Manor Farm).

The stand-ins for the monstrous Stalin (Napoleon, the pig), his cowardly but ruthless sidekick Beria (Squealer) are obvious. Snowball, the smartest pig, and most idealistic, but chased away and murdered, is Trotsky.

Watch “The Death of Stalin” if you need a refresher course on Stalin’s reign.

But giving a scheming pig Conservative Winston Churchill’s blustering voice (Maurice Denham) is no accident.

For all the point-blank shots at totalitarianism, Communism and dictators creating their own “elite” (the pigs) and Special Police (dogs, raised to be loyalists), there’s a healthy dose of Socialist Europe, and a post-National Health Service Britain endorsed by the preachings of the animated “Animal Farm.”

Idealism, socialism and “people’s rule,” aren’t mocked. Capitalism is disdained. “Embargoes” are shown for the exercises in cynicism that they are. There’s always a dirty dealer capitalist more than happy to trade with “the farm,” or launder Russian mob money in bogus real estate schemes.

Yeah, it resonates today. There’s Mr Whymper, our skulking backroom business hustler, a Deutsche Bank plutocrat putting Russian money and an American mobster/con-artist together, heedless of those who will be hurt or even killed “for profit.”

The “Our leader, wise as he is loved” accolades are straight out of Bolshevism, Nazi Germany, North Korea or wherever “cult of personality” rule is embraced by the “sheep” (literal, here).

The promise of happy life and “luxury for all” that Snowball preaches might be a legitimate promise, coming from him. But those who “have” are all too aware that they need to keep those who “don’t have” in their place, if they want to continue to “have.”

The animation isn’t Disney-smooth, but it is lovely in its own right, with a color palette that reeks of foreboding and character design that leaves no doubt who the villains are.

The CIA was good at that.

Using voice-over narration to tell the story and make its points is always a shortcoming, but seeing the alternative — TNT’s botched 1999 American TV version — underscores how right it was for this anti-commie fairy tale.

“Animal Farm” lives on, long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, because Russia is still closer to that state than a democracy, China may never abandon its “Some animals are more equal than others” ethos and North Korea remains enslaved.

And the world’s fresh outbreak of “strong men” and cult of personality leadership makes it even more topical. Ruthless cunning can still convince the sheep to believe lies that they’ve seen laid bare, with their own eyes, no matter what their nationality.

CIA-backed or not, Fall of the Soviet Union be damned, this more-subtle-than-you-think version of Orwell’s novel still resonates and remains relevant in an age of “Strong Men” rule.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: The voices of Gordon Heath and Maurice Denham.

Credits: Directed by Joy Batchelor, John Halas, script by Lothar Wolf, Borden Mace, Joseph Bryan III, Joy Batchelor and Philip Stapp, based on the George Orwell novel. An Associated British-Pathe, Louis De Rochment release.

Running time: 1:12

“Umrika” is a dark commentary on the varied reasons for immigration and its human cost wrapped in a sunny, traditional “coming to America” package. This Sundance Audience award winner is a fascinating film to get around to in post-Trump America, a time when that warm, well-worn “Anything is possible if we can just get to America” movie narrative has been utterly shattered, from within and from without.

Prashant Nair set his “illusions of immigration” parable in a very different India — the pre-boom 1980s. That India is evaporating. And within a couple of years of this film’s release, the America of “I lift my lamp beside the golden door” was closed, unmasked and utterly disgraced in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Rajan (Prateik Babbar) is the son of a picture-postcard village in the north of India, where chickens roost on the thatched roofs and goats wander the fields. He will leave the genteel poverty of this world and go to “Umrika,” as they say there — “America.”

His mother (Smita Tambe) is almost inconsolable. But she, her husband (Pramod Pathak) and younger son, Ramakant (Shubham More) are consoled by the promise that he’ll send money home, and that he’ll write.

And so he does. Within months, the letters begin to arrive as our narrator, the adult Ramakant (Suraj Sharma) tells us. Rajan sends magazine photos of the sights, and regales them all with the wonders in the U.S.

“Over here, even the bathrooms are bigger than Lalu’s hut!”

The postman, played by Rajahs Tailang, reads the letters aloud to the entire, mostly-illiterate village. Presents — a “piggy bank” — arrive, as well. And this goes on for years. Ramakant is inspired to go to school with his pal Lalu, and learn to read.

Electricity comes to Jitvapur, a family member dies, and then the letters stop. Ramakant learns the truth behind the letters, but not the whole truth. He must go, first to Dehli, and then to Umrika, to figure out what has happened.

And in the teeming, corrupt city, the young man, accompanied by his childhood pal Lalu (Tony Revolori of “The Grand Budapest Hotel”), doggedly follows Rajan’s trail, which points to all sorts of unhappy or unsavory conclusions as to what happened to him.

“Umrika” is a dramedy of intrigues, moral compromises and suspense interrupted by lovely dashes of whimsy, the gossip, legends and delusions 1980s working class/working poor Indians harbored about the mythic land across the sea.

“I’ve heard in Umrika, there’s this thing called ‘calories,'” one wag declares (in Hindi with English subtitles). “Makes them all big as balloons.”

The family back home sees pictures of a cookout Rajan allegedly went to, and just KNOW those hot dogs everybody is eating could not mean he’s eating MEAT. They must be roasted “American carrots!”

And when the traveling tent cinema shows “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” notions of who the actual “hero” of the picture is are entirely different, as the audience shouting at the screen and pelting Harrison Ford’s image with food reveals.

But those lighter touches are but distractions from the larger drama of Rama’s scheming to get to the man who helped smuggle his brother abroad, to get information from another guy from their village who lives in the city and may know something, and of Rama’s disillusionment about his brother, their family, their village, their country and the one Rajan wanted to go to — Umrika.

It’s a film of genuine surprises and tiny delights, even though it bogs down and loses its urgency when the quest that drives it falls into the background. There are hints of “Il Postino” and “The Third Man” in its mashup of plots.

The performances are generally solid, if a little generic. Revolori stands out and makes the sharpest impression.

But Nair — he went on to make “Tryst with Destiny” after this — has conjured up a warm, yet illusory and brittle memory of a more naive time, when Indians and Americans could live perfectly happy, seeing only the innocent gloss of their current lives and the glorious, gilded world that awaited them, if only they could make it to Umrika.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Suraj Sharma, Smita Tambe, Tony Revolori, Prateik Babbar and Rajesh Tailang

Credits: Written and directed by Prashant Nair. A Samosa Stories/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

My pal over at Exhibitor Relations Co. (@ERCboxoffice) just tweeted this post “Mulan” move and new “Bill & Ted” delay. The fall is shaking up as well as some movies are just pushing into early 2021. And damnitall, I have to fix one date that changed just now. “Unhinged” just gave up July 10.

“Just another film fallout Friday. Here’s the new summer line-up of cinematic sacrifices: 7/17 – BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY, SAINT MAUD 7/31 – INCEPTION: REFOLDED, UNHINGED, 8/7 – EMPTY MAN 8/12 – TENET 8/14 – GREENLAND 8/21 – ANTEBELLUM, MULAN 8/28 – BILL & TED 3, NEW MUTANTS” https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/1276672258992246785?s=20

“The Royal Hibiscus Hotel” is a shiny, foodie-friendly bauble of a rom-com, practically a brochure for Nollywood, the nickname the rest of the world has given Nigeria’s film industry.

The acting’s uneven, the story limp and generic. And like a brochure, it just lies there — static, a comedy lacking the animation, action and sense of life that would make it come alive.

It’s about an upper class Nigerian, Ope (Zainad Balogun), plugging away in the London food scene, mentored by a famous Frenchman (Elijah Braik) but fed up with the the bloke she works for, the latest London braying bully who thinks he’s Gordon Ramsey.

Maybe it’s time to take one of those calls from her always-dialing parents, a fractious couple (Jide Kosoko, Rachel Oniga) whose inability to get to the bloody point drive her (and us) to distraction. Maybe it’s time to go home to the family’s Lagos hotel, the Royal Hibiscus.

Quite the Plan B she has in mind. Must be nice. But it’s not like the place couldn’t use her help. The gum-snapping desk clerk (Kemi Lala Akindoju) would rather come on to the rich guests than answer the phone or check guests in. And the chef (Charles Inojie)? He’s fond of the bottle — any bottle.

It’s just that Dad hasn’t told her he’s selling the place. With her Mom nagging her father that “A lady her age should be married,” he’s just happy to have her back home. He lets her take over the kitchen and start making plans even as the two hunky investors (Kenneth Okolie, Deyemi Okanlawon) show up to close the deal, or badger him until he does.

But then Deji (Okolie) decides he likes what he sees — not just in the hotel, but in the kitchen. And things get…complicated.

Only they don’t. Not really. Absolutely nothing happens that we don’t see rolling gently down the hill an hour before it hits us.

The food makes for appetizing set dressing, but there’s too little preparation and explaining to make it a central feature of the film. The kitchen is as quiet as a morgue, and about as lively.

Scenes don’t move. Actors just take their position, stand there and prattle their not-that-funny lines (in English and Yoruba, with English subtitles).

The leads are lovely and charming and have chemistry. But they’re surrounded by mostly much broader players, bugging out their eyes, working their mouths as if they’ve just made the jump from silent film to sound.

Ms. Oniga may be a beloved figure in Nigerian cinema (I don’t know that.), but in this hemisphere, she should could give seminars in Central Park — the art of mugging for the camera.

This plays out as a film with a lovely sheen of sophistication, a Nigeria of affluence, culture-consciousness, with no crowds, traffic jams or poverty. But the kitchen, hotel and country we see here don’t feel cooked in, lived in or loved in.

MPAA Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Zainab Balogun, Kenneth Okolie, Jide Kosoko, Rachel Oniga, Deyemi Okanlawon,  Kemi Lala Akindoju, Charles Inojie

Credits: Directed by Ishaya Bako, script by Nicole Brown,Debo Oluwatuminu, Yinka Ogun. An Ebonylife release on Netflix

Running time: 1:31

My bucket list quest to see every road picture ever made brought me to this dry and dark comedy from 2008, a tale of a vintage car dealer and a junkie trekking across Belgium in a 1979 Caprice Classic station wagon.

No, the car’s not an “Eldorado.” That’s used in the ironic/metaphoric sense by writer-director-star Bouli Lanners. It’s the elusive “destination” his character, Yvan, thinks he’s driving the junkie (Fabrice Adde) to, AFTER he’s caught the guy breaking into the apartment he keeps over his garage and “dealership.”

Yvan is partial to “Yank Tanks,” oversized American gas guzzlers from the era motoring enthusiasts in the U.S. have labeled “Malaise Motors.” He’s just taken delivery of one. No, it’s not “competition ready,” or “prêt pour la compétition,” in his native French (with English subtitles). But he’s sure he can flip it.

Meanwhile, though, he’s got this nuisance junkie he rousted out of his apartment and left by the side of the road. The guy says his name is Elie. He bargained for the right to walk off with Yvan’s piggybank the night before. Denied that, he just wants to get “home,” to his parents’ place “near the French border.”

Along the way, they hit the Stations of the Road Trip Cross. There’s the weird fellow Chevy Caprice owner (Philippe Nahon) who offers, nay INSISTS on helping Yvan fix a busted radiator hose. In that guy’s garage is his “collection,” every car with a single dent. The cars hit and killed somebody.

“I have newspaper clippings, police reports,” he salivates, sensing a sale to a fellow “collector.” As if that’s not weird enough, he insists he can tell a person’s future by touching them. But where this encounter goes next is almost jaw-dropping.

Worried about falling asleep at the wheel? “Attach your hair to the roof (headliner in the car).

A drunk-driving near-accident (driving over an embankment) puts them in the company of nudists, led by an elderly fellow who goes by a fairly famous name. Every guy who deals with his has to look the other way.

It’s all rather daft and quite dark. Lanners, no one will be surprised to learn, has played other “Yvans” and directed other droll dramedies such as “The Giants” and “The First, The Last.”

Here, he’s a gruff and irritated presence, reluctant to trust this oddball he’s decided to take home to Momma. Yvan is stubborn, dogmatic, a bit put off by everything and everyone they run into, or runs into them. But his humanity shines through in little hints of generosity and compassion.

Adde’s Elie is every “user” you’ve ever been used by. But he’s clean enough to let some of his humanity through as well. Meeting his family provides some answers.

It’s not a great picture, and as road comedies go, it turns entirely too grim for most tastes. But “Eldorado” is an engrossing peek at a Belgium that lives, works and “collects” in ways that being a European punchline rarely let on.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity, alcohol abuse

Cast: Bouli Lanners, Fabrice Adde, Philippe Nahon

Credits: Written and directed by Bouli Lanners.  A Film Movement Plus release.

Running time: 1:21

There are funny lines, hilarious scenes and the occasional blast of gleeful, Eurovision excess rolled into “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.”

Sure, it’s an old school “high concept” star vehicle — a lot like many an earlier Will Ferrell comedy, “Semi-Pro” and “Blades of Glory,” for instance. Nobody does those better than Ferrell, so there’s that.

But Judas Apatow Priest, who EDITED this hulk? Anything cute, funny or charming gets lost in that Netflix-indulged Apatowantiasis, a glorious “SNL” sketch gag stretched to true “saga” length, a bloated, leaden two hours-plus.

The hip kids were never into the annual “Eurovision Song Contest,” a televised cheese plate serving up generic pop in grandiose stage presentations, one performer or band per country every year (save this one, COVID-canceled) for the past 60 years.

But in one fairydust-sprinkled moment, ABBA won and spun that win into global fame. It’s that moment that launches “The Story of Fire Saga,” because little Lars Erickssong forgot about his dead mother for a moment and danced wildly in front of the TV, embarrassing the hell out of his gruff, fisherman dad (Pierce Brosnan).

And little silent Sigrit Ericksdottir fell into the same “Waterloo” rapture with Lars that night in 1974. That became their shared goal and their shared lives.

Now, 46 years later, they’re still chasing that dream with their small Icelandic town’s cover band, Fire Saga, and its aged accordionist and tween drummer. Romance? No, they can’t have that, no matter now much Sigrit (Rachel McAdams) wants it.

Because “You are brother-sister?”

“No. Probably not.”

It’s because love “tears bands apart — Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, Post Malone, Semen & Garfunkel…”

“Right. I forgot about de Semen.”

They may cover Pharrell Williams’ hit “Happy,” and submit to endless drunken requests for “Ya Ya Ding Dong” from the barflies. But they dream of donning Viking gear and singing their “Double Trouble” love song for all the civilized world on TV at Eurovision.

Shockingly, events conspire to send them to Eurovision in Edinburgh. Their partnership is tested, their back-country eyes opened to a world of big talents with omnivorous sexual appetites.

Ferrell, who co-wrote the script, and director David Dobkin make the most of Netflix’s travel money, capturing the glories of Iceland and the wonders of parking a bewigged Will and whiter-than-white Rachel in it.

Edinburgh, the Scottish Sin City where the film’s version of Eurovision is staged, gets some lovely travelogue moments.

The songs are broadly funny and BIG, in keeping with the character of the contest. None quite cross over into hilarious, although many provide a chuckle.

Demi Lovato plays the Icelandic favorite who doesn’t get to compete, but who “haunts” Lars as he goes more and more outlandish with a stage production that easily overwhelms their sweet little ditty.

Dan Stevens is a hoot as a closeted Russian pop idol who makes music the homoerotic way.

The one giddy scene is a tracking shot through a “sing around,” competitors partying and vamping up a medley of Cher, ABBA, Madonna et al hits.

But the best line is landed back home in Husevik, in the bar where the locals gather to watch the competition and — knowing the ineptitude of the hometown band — “take our medicine.”

Eurovision veterans pepper the bit players cast, including the transgender Austrian Conchita Wurst, presented as just a smidgen more than sight gag.

Little here surprises, although the way the first act skips through the preliminaries you might puzzle over “How’re they going to get another 90 minutes out of this?”

By the usual ways — overextending scenes, making Graham Norton the anchor of BBC coverage of the contest, leaving in jokes that don’t land and staggering toward one of two possible finales.

Ferrell is better than this at this stage of his career, and yet he still gives it his all. It’s good to see McAdams back at work after having a baby, even if she doesn’t do her own singing.

But the quickest, silliest and sunniest way to get your fill of Eurovision is hunting up performances on Youtube, none more delightfully primitive than ABBA’s breakout moment in 1974.

“The Fire Saga Story” has barely enough sparks for a sketch, much less a “saga.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude sexual material including full nude sculptures, some comic violent images, and language

Cast: Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Pierce Brosnan, Demi Lovato, Dan Stevens

Credits: Directed by David Dobkin, script by Will Ferrell, Andrew Steele. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03

The disastrously disorganized American response to the COVID19 pandemic has me wondering if July is another write off month for the movies, sports, the works. Case numbers are skyrocketing in Florida and other states, a first wave that morphed into a second. LeBron needs to call off this Florida NBA nonsense, college football needs to take another time out. And the release of Christopher Nolan’s #Tenet has been delayed again from July 31 to Aug. 12 because of a surge in COVID-19 cases. Disney? Are you paying attention?

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