There are two ways to be funny. The first way is to know that what you’re saying is incredibly funny and to act like it’s just a remark. I have an aesthetic preference for this, not least because I grew up with an SNL that could not have pulled this off if you’d granted them Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett to write every sketch. Incidentally, that’s the secret behind several of the funniest lines in their work. Try on “It won’t be long now, comrades” or “Well, nobody’s perfect” for size. The second way is to know that what you’re saying is funny but then to continue to pile onto the joke until it can be funny twice or more. (In person, this means acting like what you’ve said is incredibly funny; in movies and TV and so on, they have to go a different direction.) I don’t think this is necessarily higher reward than the first method, but it’s certainly higher risk. After years of seeing this screengrab:

I decided to actually check out the I Think You Should Leave sketch. (Let me live, it’s television, television is for memes and old people.) Imagine my surprise to find that the line was not, simply, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this,” but “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this and give him a spanking.” That’s because there was a joke in the sketch about thirty seconds before that didn’t land in which the hot dog guy suggests spanking the perpetrator once he’s “discovered.” This is basically what the funny parts of Eurovision Song Contest are up to as well, which is to say they’re crammed to the tight with jokes that don’t always work.

“Jaja Ding Dong” is a very good joke. It’s a better song than a joke, which is the case for almost all of the music in this movie; Will Ferrell’s cinematic love letter to his wife turned out to be a way better musical than comedy. It ended up needing the joke to put it over the top, to make it more than just a faint smile but a laugh. That laugh comes from the fact that no one in Iceland, it seems, actually wants to hear Fire Saga play anything except “Jaja Ding Dong.” Miraculously, the toast sandwich of jokes comes together. Not just a bar full of people who just do not want to hear the Eurovision song, but a particularly belligerent fellow who looks like he’s taken out his bad temper by pillaging an L.L. Bean. It’s so wonderful. Whether or not you get behind Olaf’s next appearance, where he avers that he only wants to hear “Jaja Ding Dong,” is a personal question. It’s not a great bit, but I do like the way he turns into a bearded child as he opens the door to the bar, smiling, and announces to a grateful crowd that they’re going to play it again.