I’ve got free HBO for the week, so I finally watched two films I’ve been dying to watch for quite some time now: 7 Days in Hell and Tour de Pharmacy. From the great mind of Andy Samberg, these films make fun of two very niche sports, tennis and cycling. They also focus on very specific times from them: the 2010 Wimbledon match that lasted three days, and doping.
First up was 7 Days in Hell, which, as an avid fan of tennis, I was very excited to watch, mainly because I did watch most of the three day match that this mockumentary was based on. The fact that it was a first round match was outrageous, and it makes you think about how brutal the current rules are – the fifth set could go on forever, and it both of these cases it basically did! Although, the match in 7 Days in Hell was seven days long and featured some pretty ridiculous things including the Queen of England telling the two men, Aaron Williams (who was found on the street and adopted by the Williams’ family) and Charles Poole, to fight each other. There are some surprise deaths and streakers, but I can’t say too much more without being entirely inappropriate or giving all the hilarity away!
Next up was Tour de Pharmacy which recounts the doping abuse taking place during the 1982 Tour de France, that lead to the death of cyclist, JuJu Peppi. Along with Peppi, the film follows Marty Hass who is representing Nigeria (they hate him), Adrian Baton (secretly a woman), Slim Robinson (Jackie Robinson’s nephew), and Gustav Ditters (played by John Cena, so obviously steroids). All of the racers agree to ride incredibly slow to conserve their energy until they get closer to the finish line, but this leads Slim to become the first black French diary farmer, Ditters gets caught for his doping, Peppi’s heart explodes and he flies off a cliff, and Hass and Baton fall in love. All of this distraction eventually ends when Slim Robinson crosses the finish line first. Most of the story is told from the cyclist’s older selves, where we find out that Baton ended up going to jail for 35 years after killing report, Rex Honeycut, during the race.
Both of these mockumentaries were amazing in their own right. 7 Days in Hell featured a lot of tennis legends providing commentary on the match, including Chris Everett and John McEnroe, along with Serena Williams. Tour de Pharmacy did a wonderful job of failing to make Lance Armstrong an anonymous commentator of the disastrous race. Another thing they had in common were the fantastic casts! Kit Harrington was hilarious as the dimwitted Charles Poole, while John Cena and Freddie Highmore were my personal favorites as the cyclers Ditters and Baton, respectively. Both of these films have incredibly short run times, so I urge you to watch them in all your free time – you won’t regret it!