Tour de Pharmacy

You don't have to know or care much about the sport to enjoy the broad sight gags, amusing tangents, and cartoonist accents. ... Breezy fun time. [7 Jul 2017, p.52]

Samberg apparently has the network of friends and the stored-up goodwill to get anyone and everyone he wants to participate in what’s essentially a high-concept teenage showreel. Luckily for all involved, the end result is insane, filthy, and totally fun.

Fortunately, when it isn't asking you to chuckle along with Lance Armstrong's coy self-awareness, Tour de Pharmacy is smart, silly and often hilarious.

7 Days in Hell was an out-of-nowhere delight. If Tour de Pharmacy isn’t quite as great, it’s still reassuring to know this band can come back together every few years for more hilarity that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The never-ending jokes are profane, obvious, ludicrous, repetitive, absurdist, puerile, crass, tasteless, and, of course, totally freaking stupid. Yeah, I loved it.

If you can set the Armstrong scenes aside, Tour de Pharmacy is a fun, flighty, bonkers time that never overstays its welcome.

Tour de Pharmacy is a tour de farce of bad taste, unsophisticated humor, brief nudity and absolutely no redeeming values at all except that it’s damn funny and oh, so badly needed right about now.

Andy Samberg may not be in Christopher Guest’s league--yet--but his latest mockumentary, Tour De Pharmacy, has plenty of moments that will make you snicker.

It’s a sketch, essentially, effectively blown out to 40 minutes--not too short, not too long. Apart from the generally good jokes and the amusing imitations of period style, what makes Tour de Pharmacy good company is the overarching sense of play. That describes a lot of modern comedy, for better or worse, the sense that the players are on board primarily for the good time and camaraderie as much as for the material or the paycheck. It’s a feeling the modesty of this production only enhances.

You need to ask yourself: Is it O.K. for a mockumentary about a tarnished sport to include in its cast the athlete responsible for much of the tarnishing? If you can give that a “yes” and have a high tolerance for raunch, this star-filled parody, which has its premiere on Saturday night, is a hilarious home run. If your response is “no,” it’s still pretty funny but will leave an icky aftertaste.

The amount you’ll laugh at Tour de Pharmacy may depend on your tolerance for mockumentaries. This one, like most, is a string of gags. If you’re looking for something undemanding, it qualifies.