Challengers
“Tennis is a relationship”, and despite dropping the ball a couple of times, Luca Guadagnino’s steamy sports drama serves up love both on and off the court.
PRE-GAME 🎾
Welcome back to Balls on Film! 👋🏻
I hope that all of my American friends, family and readers had a wonderful Fourth of July. I know I talked about it at length in my Sandlot review, but the Fourth of July scene in that movie is still the best Fourth of July scene in cinema history. Even as someone living in Scotland, it’s my favourite movie to watch at this time of year. If you’ve never seen it before, check out the scene here:
Just wonderful. It never gets old.
Speaking of The Sandlot, you need to check out
’s wonderful wine and movie pairing feature on the film. Maria writes , which brings the worlds of wine and film together. It’s well worth your time:
So many of you have been talking about Challengers over the last couple of weeks. I missed it when it was released, and have been looking forward to getting to it for some time. With so many of you recommending it recently, and Wimbledon getting underway this week, it felt like the right pick for this week’s review.
FIRST HALF 🎾
In an interview with Little White Lies, Luca Guadagnino admitted that he doesn’t actually watch much tennis and finds it quite boring. He also went on to say that the way the sport is presented on television is “rather undynamic”. After reading that, I couldn’t help but wonder if we should have more directors who don’t actually like a particular sport directing movies about it all the time, because the tennis scenes in Challengers are utterly exhilarating.
The story focus on Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy who transitions into coaching after a career-ending injury. Tashi is married to Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), who is also a tennis player. Art, who is struggling with his game, has to compete in a Challenger event against Tashi’s former lover and his former best friend, Patrick (Josh O'Connor). The competition reignites old rivalries and unresolved emotions, both on and off the tennis court. The story jumps back and forth in time, and gradually peels back the layers of the history between the main characters
What makes Challengers so entertaining is just how downright ridiculous it is. It’s funny, dark, campy and isn’t afraid to veer into totally unhinged territory - and it embraces all of it. Before this, I wouldn’t have thought of tennis as the perfect subject for a steamy romance drama, but here we are. It works. I watched this with my wife, and on several occasions we looked at each other and muttered ‘what the hell is this movie?’. There’s one scene in particular that takes place during a storm that’s completely ludicrous, and almost feels like it doesn’t fit with the serious nature of the events unfolding on screen. Watching it, I found myself laughing away and not really sure if that was the director’s intention - but it all somehow works. Once you sit back and embrace the chaos, the film grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go until the credits roll.
I find it fascinating that Guadagnino cares so little for tennis, because I’ve never seen the sport portrayed on film with such ferocity as it is here. The game sequences are meticulously crafted and I felt like I was sweating just as much as Art and Patrick, watching them battle it out. The overuse of slow motion in particular, while initially jarring, actually added to the intensity of the action, most notably the final game. Watching sports movies, you often (intentionally) feel like part of the audience during a game scene, but the camera work and Guadagnino‘s use of rapid cuts here make you feel like you’re right on the court, right down to the way we see the audience’s heads track the action back and forth. I felt like I was loading up a first-person tennis video game at points. It feels a bit gimmicky after a while, but it’s like nothing I’ve seen before in a movie about tennis.
The Reznor/Ross score in Challengers is, at times, just as intense as what’s happening on the court and it really adds weight to the action as well as the off-court dramatic stuff. It feels a bit repetitive after a while - almost mirroring the gruelling back and forth nature of the game, but it’s so energetic and such a punch in the face that it actually feels like a separate character in itself. It does a great job of helping convey the emotions that the characters are going through, and what they’re communicating to one another - often without a single word spoken.
Speaking of intensity, Zendaya is the star of the show here. Tashi is a fiercely ambitious character, but also a deeply flawed one, and it’s all portrayed in a very balanced way. The character’s story and her journey from superstar athlete to coach is told with nuance, despite some of the absurd turns that the story takes. She’s pretty terrifying at times too. You get a real sense that she could fly off the handle at any moment, and she prioritises winning above all else. It’s a unique look into the mind of such a driven athlete, and how they pivot and transition when life throws them a curveball. She’s every bit as intense as a coach as she is a player, and other characters walk on eggshells when she’s around. This is particularly evident with Art, who veers into human lapdog territory at times. She holds a power over both him and Patrick that’s palpable throughout the whole film.
Not everything in Challengers works. While Tashi is a fascinating and layered character, neither Art or Patrick are quite as compelling. Their motivations are not all that clear, beyond both being infatuated with her. Perhaps that’s all that was intended, but for as downright absurd as the story gets, I wanted a better understanding of what was driving them outside of how horny they both were. Some additional backstory for both of them may have added some extra weight to the plot and had me more invested in the actual journey as opposed to the purely entertaining nature of it all. Art and Tashi have a daughter in the present day part of the film, and some further exploration of the family dynamic and him as a father would have helped understand what he’s going through as a pro tennis player contemplating his future.
While the tennis scenes are extremely engaging and I was entertained throughout, I found myself not really caring all that deeply about what happened to anyone. All three characters are pretty unlikeable and hard to root for, but Tashi is at least superbly entertaining in the process. Seriously, she has the greatest resting ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ face of all time.
The non-chronological structure also feels unnecessary and didn’t really do much to enhance the story. I left the film feeling that a more traditional narrative might have allowed me to care a bit more deeply about the characters, particularly Art and Patrick. Even at over two hours long, the structure and pacing never really allows any time to breathe and fully digest what’s happening. It matches the frenetic nature of the tennis scenes though, so could have very well been intentional - but I’d have preferred a more linear approach.
Challengers is flawed, but always superbly entertaining. The tennis scenes and Zendaya’s fantastic performance are the stars of the show, but the film trips up over it’s own disjointed structure and it leads to some undercooked elements that prevent it from being a grand slam.
Challengers is currently available to rent or buy on various digital platforms. I purchased the film on the Apple TV store for this review.
HALFTIME 🎾
Let’s take a break for halftime. Grab some refreshments and settle in for the second half.
Has anyone else watched America’s Sweethearts on Netflix? The series follows the 2023-24 Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders squad, their auditions, training camp and into the NFL season. My wife and I initially hit play on this knowing nothing about it, and thinking it would just good background noise, but ended up totally absorbed by it. Some of it, however, made me feel a bit depressed and somewhat…icky. I’ll be diving a bit deeper into this soon, but that tour guide scene absolutely made my skin crawl. 🤢
Have you watched this? Let me know your thoughts, if so. It’s available to stream on Netflix.
A quick reminder: if the newsletter isn’t going to your inbox, and going to junk mail instead, please be sure to locate the mail in your junk folder, and mark it as not spam. Alternatively, just reply to any email from me with a quick hello, and it shouldn’t happen again! 😊
Now, let’s get back on the court!
SECOND HALF 🎾
Let’s jump into some awards and bonus content.
BEST SCENE 🏆
The final match scene. It’s one of the best and most intense tennis sequences I’ve seen in film. The editing, the score, the glances and interactions between our three characters without a word being spoken. It’s perfect.
BEST LINE 🏆
Tashi: You don't know what tennis is.
Patrick: What is it?
Tashi: It's a relationship.
Patrick: Is that what you and Anna Mueller had today?
Tashi: It is, actually. For about fifteen seconds there, we were actually playing tennis. And we understood each other completely. So did everyone watching. It's like we were in love. Or like we didn't exist. We went somewhere really beautiful together.
MVP AWARD 🏆
Zendaya absolutely kills it here with her performance as Tashi. The character just exudes intensity and always feels completely unhinged just under the surface. You understand completely that her competitiveness, passion for the game and her drive to be the best comes before everything else. It’s fantastic to watch. She conveys so much in the film, even with just a quick glance.
IMDB TRIVIA HIGHLIGHT 🏆
The majority of the tennis balls hit during the movie are CGI, as it was apparently too difficult to achieve the desired cinematic style using real balls.
BEST LETTERBOXD REVIEW 🏆
The perfect two sentence summary of this movie. You really couldn’t sum it up any better.
BONUS FEATURE 💿
Amazon released a 10-chapter video diary with plenty of behind the scenes footage on the making of the film, which is pretty cool.
In the next feature, Zendaya, Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist join BBC Radio 1's film critic Ali Plumb to talk about the film. This is a fun discussion with lots of interesting tidbits.
POST-GAME 🎾
That just about brings things to a close for this week, folks.
On July 4th 1939, Lou Gehrig delivered his infamous ‘Luckiest Man’ speech at old Yankee Stadium and brought global attention to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). With that, it feels like the right time to revisit the 1942 classic Pride of the Yankees next week. Tissues at the ready!
Let me know what you thought of Challengers in the comments, and tell me what you’ve been watching this week. Next week, I’ll be sharing more info on the release of the first issue of The Clubhouse, which will release separately to the Friday edition of the newsletter. I’m excited to share more on what I’ve got planned for it!
See you next week.
~James
As someone who really loved this movie, I totally enjoyed your review. I also agree with your critiques, but I actually liked that all 3 characters were sort of reprehensible and even pathetic in their own way. My favorite remark: “I couldn’t help but wonder if we should have more directors who don’t actually like a particular sport directing movies about it all the time, because the tennis scenes in Challengers are utterly exhilarating.” I know right? The tennis matches were so visually exciting that it’s incredible that the director doesn’t care for the sport. So far, this is one of my favorite movies of the year.
I love your review and appreciate your commentary. I hated this film though. Everything about it felt like it was taking itself too seriously at the wrong times and not seriously enough at the right times. The score also had an inflated sense of purpose and I thought maybe it was an error with our movie theater that the sound got the music was loud and jarring (distracting), out of sync with the story and interrupting at the oddest times. Patrick was by far the most compelling character not Tashi or Art who commanded the most screen time. I love tennis 🎾 btw and played for years before transitioning to pickleball