I was looking around online for a movie to watch, and saw the title and poster (not the image below, and much smaller) for the movie, 7 Days in Hell.
I used to play tennis a lot in school, so I was immediately curious, given the title. I was skimming the synopsis, so I what I got from it was "documentary", Wimbledon 2001", and "match that took seven days". Now I was excited. I couldn't believe that I hadn't heard about this back when I was playing. I tried to Google some more information about the match, but couldn't find anything.
Confused, I went back to the page, and saw the name of one of the actors: "Andy Samberg". Ahh...now it made sense. Now I was excited for a different reason.
I don't know how many of you used to watch Christopher Guest movies, but I thought most of them were masterpieces..."Spinal Tap", "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show", "A Mighty Wind"...actually, those are probably all the ones I saw. Anyway, I think that's most of them. And even though this is a cliche, it really applies here: If Christopher Guest didn't invent the mockumentary comedy format, he certainly perfected it. It's also amazing that almost all of them are basically improv. For example, the filming of one of his movies, "Spinal Tap", had produced over 50 hours of improvised footage, which Guest had to go through to find the best clips to use, and piece together an 80 minute movie from. [1]
I'm definitely not as up-to-date with movie trends as much as I wish I could be, so I can't be sure, but it seems like the mockumentary genre has either died off or gone very quiet in the past few years. Anyway, I can't say that it bothered me much, or that I even noticed. It's possible that I'd simply gotten my fill after a decade of "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation", both of which I enjoyed at times.
Still, I've found "Andy Samberg" to be consistently hilarious ever since "Jizz In My Pants", so even though I didn't mourn the decline of mockumentaries in the past few years, the combination of both these elements were enough that I found myself smiling in anticipation.
I assumed that the comedy in this movie wouldn't be as subtle as Christopher Guest's (not that they're incredibly subtle or anything), because, well, Andy Samberg. So my expectations for the movie can be summed up eloquently by a quote from Mike Tyson, from Season 2, Episode 1 of his animated television series, "Mike Tyson Mysteries":
"Oh, that is low brow. It's funny as shit, but it's low brow."
Luckily for me, I happen to enjoy lowbrow humor immensely. And I was not disappointed. Off the top of my head, I can't really think of any major flaws. Yes, there are predictable bits and parts, but the over-the-top performances prevent them from being annoying at all. The celebrity roles were very good, and actually added a lot to the movie (John McEnroe is surprisingly good at this!). Some of them, more unexpected/unrelated than others :
A lot of the little details were done very well, like the tennis scenes, which looked very realistic, just like real tennis coverage. And the pacing fits the movie very well, starting strong and in-your-face with its brand of humor, and progressively builds to levels of absolute absurdity all through the movie right to the very end.
I guess the only disappointment would be the surprising and unusual length of the film, which is less than 40 minutes. On the other hand, during the entire movie, it really felt just right, as I was completely engaged and thoroughly entertained. If you don't expect too much out of it, I think you'll enjoy this short movie if you're at all a fan of either Andy Samberg or mockumentary comedies, or are looking for a quick . Besides, it's only 40 minutes--just go watch it! If you're still not convinced, try the trailer below:
Good times!
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