After watching the trailer for “7 Days in Hell,” I thought I knew exactly what to expect from this HBO mockumentary. I was wrong.
“7 Days in Hell” is as outrageous as it gets, but it works. With a length of approximately 45 minutes, the mockumentary really achieved its main objective: to entertain and create laughs.
Aaron Williams (Andy Samberg) and Charles Poole (“Game of Thrones’ ” Kit Harington) face each other in a Wimbledon tennis match in 2001. Samberg’s Williams was adopted and trained by Venus and Serena’s dad Richard.
Poole is raised by an obsessive mother who only cares for his success and nothing else.
The mockumentary is driven by many cameos of actual sports celebrities like Serena Williams, John McEnroe and Jim Lampley. This cameos help create an atmosphere of veracity and gives the show a feeling of legitimacy.
When William’s and Poole’s career reach a professional level, they are assigned to play each other in their opening debut of the 2001 Wimbledon. Besides of both being really talented, luck, stamina, mental games and outside situations play a part in this outrageous match, which is extended more than it ever should had.
The story follows both William’s and Poole’s origins.
Williams is a overconfident goofy looking athlete that has no sense of style and was very close of conquering the Wimbledon a few years before.
Poole is an upcoming talent who is expected to win it all and it’s the only athlete representing England in this tournament.
Emphasizing in several sport related stereotypes and clichés the show goes intertwining the characters with press conferences and interviews both before and after the match. And with commentaries from several familiar faces.
The show bases itself in crude humor and explicit scenes that some if not many might find inappropriate. However they do crack out a few if not many laughs.
The humor in this mockumentary is not innovative. Sacha Baron Cohen has done a few times before with movie length pieces like Borat and Brüno but the cameos mentioned before give it a different feeling.
“It would have been incredibly tragic, if these were football players or basketball players, but it was tennis players, who cares?” says Jim Lampley just as the film is about to end.
Fans of the sport might be outraged by “7 Days in Hell,” but the mockumentary takes it so far that even the most avid fan will find a laugh at the exaggerated events that drive this production.