Current:Home > InvestReview: Zendaya's 'Challengers' serves up saucy melodrama – and some good tennis, too -Quantum Capital Pro
Review: Zendaya's 'Challengers' serves up saucy melodrama – and some good tennis, too
View
Date:2025-04-14 15:32:23
The saucy tennis melodrama “Challengers” is all about the emotional games we play with each other, though there are certainly enough volleys, balls and close-up sweat globules if you’re more into jockstraps than metaphors.
Italian director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name”) puts an art-house topspin on the sports movie, with fierce competition, even fiercer personalities and athletic chutzpah set to the thumping beats of a techno-rific Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score. “Challengers” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) centers on the love triangle between doubles partners-turned-rivals (Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) and a teen wunderkind (Zendaya) and how lust, ambition and power dynamics evolve their relationships over the course of 13 years.
The movie opens with Art (Faist) and Tashi (Zendaya) as the It couple of pro tennis: He’s eyeing a U.S. Open title, the only tournament he’s never won, while she’s his intense coach, manager and wife, a former sensation along the lines of a Venus or Serena whose career was cut short by a gnarly knee injury. To build up his flagging confidence after recent losses, Tashi enters Art in a lower-level event that he can dominate – until he faces ex-bestie Patrick (O’Connor) in the final match.
Justin Kuritzkes’ soapy screenplay bounces between that present and the trios’ complicated past via flashbacks, starting when Art and Patrick – a ride-or-die duo known as “Fire and Ice” – both have eyes for Tashi. All three are 18 and the hormones are humming: The boys have been tight since they were preteens at boarding school, but a late-night, three-way makeout session, and the fact that she’ll only give her number to whoever wins the guys' singles match, creates a seismic crack that plays itself out over the coming years.
All three main actors ace their arcs and changing looks over time – that’s key in a nonlinear film like this that’s all over the place. As Tashi, Zendaya plays a woman who exudes an unshakable confidence, though her passion for these two men is seemingly her one weakness. Faist (“West Side Story”) crafts Art as a talented precision player whose love for the game might not be what it once was, while O’Connor (“The Crown”) gives Patrick a charming swagger with and without a racket, even though his life has turned into a bit of a disaster.
From the start, the men's closeness hints at something more than friendship, a quasi-sexual tension that Tashi enjoys playing with: She jokes that she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker” yet wears a devilish smile when Art and Patrick kiss, knowing the mess she’s making.
Tennis is “a relationship,” Tashi informs them, and Guadagnino uses the sport to create moments of argumentative conversation as well as cathartic release. Propelled by thumping electronica, his tennis scenes mix brutality and grace, with stylish super-duper close-ups and even showing the ball’s point of view in one dizzying sequence. Would he do the same with, say, curling or golf? It’d be cool to see because more often than not, you want to get back to the sweaty spectacle.
Guadagnino could probably make a whole movie about masculine vulnerability in athletics rather than just tease it with “Challengers,” with revealing bits set in locker rooms and saunas. But the movie already struggles with narrative momentum, given the many tangents in Tashi, Art and Patrick’s thorny connections: While not exactly flabby, the film clocks in at 131 minutes and the script could use the same toning up as its sinewy performers.
While “Challengers” falls nebulously somewhere between a coming-of-age flick, dysfunctional relationship drama and snazzy sports extravaganza, Guadagnino nevertheless holds serve with yet another engaging, hot-blooded tale of flawed humans figuring out their feelings.
veryGood! (52765)
Related
- Sarah J. Maas books explained: How to read 'ACOTAR,' 'Throne of Glass' in order.
- Lionel Messi scores goal in return, but Inter Miami turns sights on Monterrey after draw
- Victims of Montana asbestos pollution that killed hundreds take Warren Buffet’s railroad to court
- Donovan Clingan powering Connecticut as college basketball's 'most impactful player'
- Have Dry, Sensitive Skin? You Need To Add These Gentle Skincare Products to Your Routine
- Lionel Messi scores goal in return, but Inter Miami turns sights on Monterrey after draw
- What Final Four games are today? Breaking down the NCAA Tournament semifinals of March Madness
- Jacob Flickinger's parents search for answers after unintentional strike kills World Central Kitchen aid workers
- Buckingham Palace staff under investigation for 'bar brawl'
- Eclipse cloud cover forecasts and maps show where skies will clear up for April 8's celestial show
Ranking
- Justice Department, Louisville reach deal after probe prompted by Breonna Taylor killing
- Lionel Messi scores goal in return, but Inter Miami turns sights on Monterrey after draw
- Hotel prices soar as tourists flock to see solar eclipse
- ALAIcoin: Blockchain Technology is the Core of Metaverse and Web3 Development
- The White House is cracking down on overdraft fees
- Security of GalaxyCoin Futures Exchange
- North Carolina State's Final Four run ends against Purdue but it was a run to remember and savor
- Your Buc-ee's questions answered: Where's the biggest store? How many new stores are coming?
Recommendation
Louvre will undergo expansion and restoration project, Macron says
Suspended Orlando commissioner ordered to stay away from woman she’s accused of defrauding
Final Four highlights, scores: UConn, Purdue will clash in men's title game
ALAIcoin: The Odds of BTC Reaching $100,000 Are Higher Than Dropping to Zero
Highlights from Trump’s interview with Time magazine
Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and more stars laud microdermabrasion. What is it?
Powerball prize climbs to $1.3B ahead of next drawing
Gunfight at south Florida bar leaves 2 dead and 7 injured