PLOT: At the 1982 Tour de France, an investigation results in all but five, heavily doped, riders being disqualified.
REVIEW: TOUR DE PHARMACY is the follow-up to The Lonely Island’s well-received sports doc spoof, 7 DAYS IN HELL. Coming from the same director, Jake Szymanski (MIKE & DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES), and writer, Murray Miller, this is another fun, quick (forty minutes) comedy that’s funnier than most theatrical features that have come out this year.
Instead of satirizing tennis, this time they tackle the major doping scandal that resulted in Lance Armstrong becoming a pariah. It’s done as a mock doc flashing back to 1982, with a star-studded cast playing the younger and older versions of the heavily "enhanced" riders. Andy Samberg and Jeff Goldblum play a Nigerian (!) rider, while “Hamilton’s” Daveed Diggs and Danny Glover, play a cyclist descended from Jackie Robinson who wants to be the first black Tour de France winner. Freddie Highmore and Julia Ormond play a female rider posing as male, while Orlando Bloom is the most heavily drugged rider, with the movie opening with his drug-fueled death and the litany of substances he was on. Best of all is John Cena and Dolph Lundgren as the steroid riddled Austrian rider, a nice touch given how many Lundgren jokes there were in 7 DAYS IN HELL.
While it doesn’t quite have the insane inspiration and laugh-a-second pace of its predecessor, there are lots of good jokes. Everyone is game, with celebrity cameos aplenty, from Jon Hamm doing the narration, to Will Forte, J.J Abrams, and most shockingly of all, an extended cameo by Lance Armstrong as himself, parodying his current status. While many won’t be find anything funny at all about Armstrong, his inclusion is pretty daring.
It’s interesting that Samberg actually takes a bit of a backseat this time, letting most of the great gags go to Diggs (who’s a scene-stealer) and the hilarious Cena, who proves once again to have ace comic timing (when’s he gonna get a full-on comedy vehicle?). Some of the jokes fall flat, with the scatological humor not as outrageous or sharp as it was in 7 DAYS IN HELL, but there are more than enough winners to fill forty minutes. Like in the other film, it goes off on wild tangents, which wind up being funnier than anything else, although a short animation about red blood cells is a bit too on-the-nose and seems ripped-off from a similar gag on “Atlanta.”
While not quite as consistent or instantly quotable as 7 DAYS IN HELL, TOUR DE PHARMACY is fresh and funny, with a handful of classic moments. If you have HBO, this is one you gotta check out. You don’t have to leave home to see one of the funniest movies of the year.
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