7 Days in Hell (2015)

I watched Tour de Pharmacy about a month ago and it was hilarious. Cycling will never get as compelling and entertaining as it is in Szymanski's mockumentary. Which is the reason I decided to watch 7 Days in Hell, the previous mockumentary by Szymanski. 

As you probably guessed from the poster, 7 Days in Hell is about tennis, and more specifically about the rivalry between an American tennis player, Aaron Williams (Andy Samberg), and an English tennis player, Charles Poole (Kit Harrington). The main focus of this mockumentary is the 2001 Wimbledon match between the two of them that lasted seven days. 

Just like cycling, tennis is one of those sports that are boring to watch (personally, I love playing tennis but there's nothing worse than watching other people playing it) so making the film more entertaining than the actual sport was pretty easy. And Szymanski didn't miss the easy ball. 

7 Days in Hell is throughout entertaining, it makes fun of the sport and crazy rivalries without being offensive, and it's got an engaging story that is well developed. 

There also are some pretty absurd, eccentric, over-the-top and interesting characters and the actors nail them. Andy Samberg is hilarious as Aaron Williams,  a man with quite a temper who is also Serena and Venus Williams's adopted brother (Serena makes a cameo in this), and Kit Harrington really impressed me as Charles Poole, a not-so-bright momma's boy who is supposed to make Britain proud. I didn't know Harrington could do funny.

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That said, 7 Days in Hell is no Tour de Pharmacy. While the latter was hilarious from start to finish, some of the jokes and gags in this mockumentary just didn't work for me. Sometimes I laughed pretty loudly, like when Aaron Williams is snorting cocaine during the match, but sometimes I just had a blank face and couldn't believe that was actually supposed to be funny.