Challengers – Review
Yep. Another Luca Guadagnino movie. When last I left him, it was with the Timothee Chalamet vehicle Bones and All.
**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
131 Minutes Rated R
Written by Justin Kuritzkes
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Synopsis:
Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach is married to a champion on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.
It’s been 3 weeks since I screened Challengers, and I haven’t done this review yet, probably because I was hoping my thoughts would change about it in that time.
Nope.
I went into this one with one thought: well, two thoughts:
First: people are going to flock to this film because it’s got Zendaya in it.
Second: if the dynamics of this film had been reversed, people would have been losing their collective shit about it.
That said, I watched it.
Honestly, having enjoyed Guadagnino’s Suspiria, and having absolutely no idea why Bones and All even exists, this was the tie-breaker for me.
I think you can guess which way the tie-breaker went for me.
Look, I’m not going to lie and just trash the movie; it’s got some interesting and even good bits to it. Overall, I found the performances to be convincing, some of the cinematography of the tennis matches to be good (it’s hard to make tennis visually compelling) — except for the inexplicable choice to include some FIRST PERSON TENNIS shots.
What the hell, man? That was just a mess of blurry imagery that was not only distracting, but it added nothing to the narrative.
I also found the score to be generally compelling, even though I wouldn’t have expected to enjoy the musical stylings used in the tennis scenes to be my cup of tea: but they worked well for me.
I don’t want to belabor the point, here, but generally speaking, this film is about three pretty irredeemable people, each looking out for themselves to the detriment of each other (people they claim/believe they like/love) and, ironically, themselves, as well.
It’s just an ugly, ugly movie, filled with the most attractive ugly people I’ve ever seen.
As for the fact that this film is basically marketing itself as some sort of Zendaya sex-tape fantasy: Nah.
One of my fellow critics calls this the “horny tennis movie,” but I had to qualify that by saying that it’s either too horny or not horny enough.
Again: I absolutely do not HATE this movie.
But I sure don’t like it.
And it makes Bones and All look reasonable by comparison.
In fact, if I want to watch a tennis romance movie, I’ll watch Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany in 2004’s Wimbeldon.
Challengers hits theaters Friday, April 26, and stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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