Starring: Andy Samberg, Kit Harrington, John Hamm, Mary Steenburgen, David Copperfield, Jim Lampley and more people than I want to type out
Director: Jake Szymanski
Writer: Murray Miller
I probably don’t have to tell you about the HBO Sports documentary, 7 Days in Hell, about the epic 7-day Wimbledon tennis match between American Aaron Williams and Englishman Charles Poole. The memory of the actual event is probably still clear in your mind. You’ve probably sketched it absentmindedly as you sit at your desk at work. Each point and exciting moment probably plays across your mind as you fall asleep at night. At this point, a documentary probably seems redundant.
But, the good folks at HBO have seen fit to give us one anyway.
After watching Draft Day and Million Dollar Arm I deserved this. Unlike those two turds, this movie is stupid on purpose, which in turn makes it brilliant. If I were to list my 10 all-time favorite comedies, most of them would be mockumentaries so this was already in my wheelhouse. When you cast a guy from Game of Thrones, we’ve moved beyond my wheelhouse into a luxurious private cabin, with ornate wood furniture, tapestries of medieval battles on the wall and rugs that used to be animals with sharp teeth.
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The documentary recounts the 7-day match between Aaron Williams, the adopted brother of Venus and Serena Williams, and Charles Poole, a painfully stupid British tennis star. Williams was “The Bad Boy of Tennis” and is making his return to the grass court after a fall from grace and prison sentence in Sweden for selling a custom line of underwear that made its male wearers experience elephantitis and whatever you do, don’t Google that.
Williams escapes prison in Sweden after seeing Poole on television during a massive, prison-wide showery orgy and as is the custom in Sweden when one escapes prison, he was then considered a free man.
In Williams’ absence, Poole has become a tennis prodigy, a sport that he hates but only plays because his mother forced him to. Poole is beloved by all of England as its first legitimate tennis star in decades and is especially loved by television presenter Caspian Wint, who spends most of their interviews asking Poole to display his abdominal muscles or inappropriately touching the young star.
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Williams’ return to England isn’t without controversy. Years before he left tennis to become a fashion maven and prison orgy participant, he’d been at the top of his game. With victory at Wimbledon in his grasp, Williams accidentally kills a line judge with a serve. Well, he didn’t technically kill him, as the line judge suffered a fatal heart attack, but only after being hit in the face by Williams’ serve. This would turn out to be a point of contention between Williams and the crowd at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
The math turned on that moment and Williams, who looked like he was coasting to victory, wound up losing the match. While receiving his second-place trophy, he gets in a scuffle with Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent and pushes him to the ground.
So you could see the end of the movie and the historic week-long match as a triumphant return for Williams, a return in which he has sex with not one, but two streakers on the grass court. Williams has sex with each individually, then enjoys a threesome with them both, male and female and since there’s no specific rule at Wimbledon about sexing up a man and a woman mid-match, the judges, crowd and, of course, Queen of England, all allow Williams to finish his three bouts of lovemaking.
The Queen, as she often is, is one of the true villains of the movie as her pressure and threats on Poole to perform finally get physical in an elevator in one of the latter days of the match.
The match finally concludes as it had to, but I’ve spoiled enough and, frankly, these reviews work best if you read them after you’ve seen the movie first.
The verdict: You should watch this movie every day for the rest of your life until the Sun burns out.
