Seven Days in Utopia – reality scores a bogey

It's unlikely, but the tagline for the upcoming Seven Days in Utopia should be "It's Doc Hollywood, but Bill Kilgore plays Ra's al Ghul and there's golf in it", because that sums the whole thing up entirely. Without hyperbole, Seven Days in Utopia sounds like it has everything for anyone who enjoys small-town Americana and Robert Duvall as an eccentric mentor figure and some golf and no other things.

But can Seven Days in Utopia really live up to all these mighty expectations? Let's comb through the trailer for a closer look:

This is Luke Chisholm, a professional golfer who'd enjoy better professional success if his caddy wasn't his father, because then he wouldn't be constantly reminded of his silly name when he should be concentrating on his swing.

Too busy cursing the fact that he shares a surname with Sporty Spice, Luke chokes during a big match and his father quits. His career is now almost certainly over – that is, unless he happens to crash his car in a small, folksy American town that forces him to profoundly reassess his life's direction. But how likely is that to happen?

Oh, quite likely. However, Luke's time as a professional sportsman is still finished. That is, unless the field he crashed into somehow belongs to a kindly-yet-eccentric retired golfer played by Duvall. But seriously, what are the chances of that happening?

Apparently the chances are pretty much 100%, because that's precisely what happens. And by some bizarre quirk of almost literally unbelievable fate, Duvall says he can restore Chisholm's golf-playing ability to its former glory in just seven days. But what does Duvall's guaranteed no-fail scheme actually involve? Glad you asked.

Day one: Playing golf while being stared at by a man on a horse.

Day two: Riding a horse up a hill and then staring at a river for an entire day.

Day three: Painting a picture of a tree for some reason.

Day four: Going fishing, presumably because both activities involve standing up and waggling a stick around.

Day five: Watching Robert Duvall silently pull his best Yoda face for several hours at a time until you don't know whether he's actually being wise about golf or just falling asleep or having a stroke.

Day six: Flying an aeroplane while Robert Duvall goads you with his full set of fingers.

Day seven: The most important day of all. This is where Duvall, after watching one too many episodes of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, decides to force you into an emotional showdown about all the ways that your father was never there for you. As a result of this confrontation, Luke Chisholm's confidence and golf technique reach staggering new levels. Now he can go out, become the athlete he's always wanted to be and repair the broken bonds with his father. Truly, Duvall has saved his life.

Except, hang on, it looks like he's fallen for a local girl. This means all of that mentoring was for nothing. Now, instead of being a golf champion with a healthy father-son relationship, Chisholm is just going to hang around the same stupid little town staring all moony-eyed at that woman from True Blood until the day he dies. Brilliant. Well done, Robert Duvall – a fat lot of good you turned out to be.

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