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Challengers (2024)

I think that Challengers may go down as my most disappointing film of the year. It’s not terrible but it was so frustrating that I can’t actually remember the last thing I felt like this. The film sees Tashi (Zendaya), Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) engage in a weird love triangle with the backdrop of tennis just there to add some ‘excitement’.

There are many problems with the film. Mainly that I didn’t care about who won or lost in the love stakes as all three seemed horrible people that probably do exist in the tennis world but that would be another reason why I am glad I am not a tennis player. The performances are good but I just found all three loathsome. Art was the least terrible but that was more out of the fact someone has to be the least worst. Despite giving a great performance, there isn’t very much to the character of Tashi despite the best efforts of Zendaya (who is also a producer).  


Other problems include the dance music; they use the same 10 seconds of dance music throughout the entire movie no matter what context the scene was in. There was one point where art and Patrick were in the sauna where the dance music was playing so loud that I could just about hear what Mike Faist was saying. I was never a fan of dance music to begin with but this film has given me a new level of hatred. However the final scene was just about the most infuriating that I felt. So there was one shot which must have taken about 2 minutes to take place. There comes a point where slow motion loses any tension any for me that's about 20-30 in, this went on for at least another minute so i had to summon all my energy not to shout ‘TAKE THE F*****G SHOT’. Somehow I don’t think that was the director’s intention. 


Despite this being one of the most frustrating films I can remember seeing. I don’t regret seeing it. I think that the central performances are at least interesting even if its for the wrong reason. I can’t blame Trent Reznor or Atticus Ross because they were probably just doing what they were told and I have liked their work in the past so its down to the director who seems to think that the same dance track needs to be played repeatedly and at a distracting high volume. 


On the plus side….well Luca Guadagnino did make me find tennis enjoyable even if it was just for two hours.
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