Our take
This HBO mockumentary is part-pastiche of the mythologising sports documentary, part-zany comic creation of its own. Tour de Pharmacy tells the incredible untrue story of the 1982 Tour de France, the most chaotic iteration of the race that never happened. Of the original 170 cyclists, all but five were disqualified for bribing the deep-in-debt president of cycling’s governing body (Kevin Bacon), leaving only Italian-a sensation-a JuJu Peppi (Orlando Bloom); secret female racer Adrian Baton (Julia Ormond and Freddie Highmore); frustrated nephew of Jackie Robinson, Slim (Daveed Diggs); a roided-out Austrian (John Cena); and Marty Hass (Andy Samberg), a Nigerian cyclist despised by his country.
Tragedy, scandal, and surprising romance unfold across the documentary’s chronicling of the race’s 21 stages, with plenty of digressions along the way — from a riotous interview with the head of the sport’s anti-doping agency (played by Nathan Fielder) to an animated explanation of red and white cells that devolves into a surreally bloody civil war. The humor zooms between the high-brow (French New Wave references delivered by JJ Abrams) and the R-rated from scene to scene, making this breezy mockumentary a wild ride of its own.
Streaming arrival
The story
A mockumentary that chronicles the prevalence of doping in the world of professional cycling.
Elsewhere
"As a piece of entertainment that primarily aims to distract and delight, it's can't-pass-up goofiness."
— Nick Allen
A look back at the climactic fictional events of the 1982 Tour de France.
It’s an understatement to describe Tour de Pharmacy’s cast as stacked: it features Mike Tyson and JJ Abrams playing themselves, and includes memorable bit parts from Danny Glover, Dolph Lundgren, Phylicia Rashad, and Maya Rudolph (as a sex-obsessed cycling journalist). Jon Hamm and Edgar Wright provide the aggrandizing narration, while James Marsden is roped in to play a posh BBC reporter who, in a twisty development, becomes the race’s dark horse. Tour de Pharmacy’s big joke relies on one other castmember whose identity we won’t spoil — though that’s not a courtesy the documentary-makers grant him when they accidentally shine a light into his blacked-out-for-anonymity’s-sake silhouette.
You might say this is… wheelie funny.
The details
Who picked it
Farah Cheded is a UK-based curator at A Good Movie to Watch and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved freelance critic whose work has been published at outlets including The Playlist, Paste Magazine, and Film School Rejects. She lives in fear of the day she runs out of 'Columbo' episodes to watch.
