[8.4/10] The marriage between the self-seriousness of sports documentaries and the irreverence of The Lonely Island sense of humor is a match made in heaven. As someone who’s no stranger to a *30 For 30* doc or an SNL Digital Short, combining the two turned out to be better than I could ever have expected.

7 Days in Hell skewers any number of sports clichés, from the rule-breaking bad boy, to the stage-mom’d young prodigy, to the inevitable “rise and fall” narrative that these sorts of retrospectives take. Couching everything in the sport of tennis, and the attendant stuffiness, gives the film a chance to blend the high and the low in a delightful fashion. Playing off a real life extended tennis match to such wild extremes allows the film to mix the real and the fake and find the hilarity in the combination.

There’s also plenty of room for the absurd and ridiculous that are appropriate for something starring Andy Samberg. From David Copperfield randomly appearing (and partying) with competitors, to the Queen of England as a drunken mob boss type, to the insanity of how the match’s end and aftermath, there is plenty of the fun, random humor that Samberg’s braintrust specialized in.

The only real demerit on that front is that the jump to premium cable means a bit of gratuitous nudity and sexual content that feels way more in service of “look what we can do now!” than anything that really drives the comedy of the piece.

Still, on the whole, 7 Days in Hell is full of laughs, brimming with great comic performances from Andy Samberg, Kit Harrington, and a murderer’s row of supporting performers, and a gut-busting application of the prestige sports doc veneer to true sporting ridiculousness.