'Challengers' Serves A Weak Set
It's a challenge to rate Challengers. It's not your typical sports film, which is refreshing. Challengers doesn't focus on a champion but rather on someone who's just trying to be good enough to play in the pros. At one point in the film, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) is on a date. He tells the girl he's dating that tennis is boring. I couldn't have said it better for this movie myself. I respect a lot of what Luca Guadagnino is doing. He's telling the tale of a love triangle instead of a big competition. However, the effect of that triangle didn't resonate with me.
Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is a knockout tennis player. But more than that, she's a manipulative, vicious seductress. If the film is asking me to root for her, I simply can't. She's the antagonist in the story, but I have trouble seeing Zendaya in a sexualized role. I know she's a grown woman, but she still looks like a kid to me. When I see Art and Patrick drooling over her, I can't help but cringe, especially during a three-way scene that gets uncomfortably erotic in its foreplay. Throughout the film, Tashi is manipulating Art and Partick (Josh O'Connor). There's one particularly cruel ultimatum Tashi gives to Patrick toward the end of the film that makes you question his loyalty.
Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig are like brothers. Although they are not from the same familial gene pool, the two are inseparable. Even with Tashi playing with both men's hearts, the two don't clash. Challengers is a film that doesn't have a real conflict. It makes me question what our characters are driving at. Patrick lives in his car with hopes of one day making the big bucks as a professional tennis player. But he's willing to throw it all away so he can be with Tashi? I have trouble buying that plot point. I know many people leave their dreams so they can be with the woman that they love but Tashi gives little to love about. When Tashi isn't making out with Patrick she's insulting him.
Tashi's not only playing with two men's hearts, possibly for her personal amusement, but she also has a child. Does she have a husband? Is she divorced? The film doesn't tell us such things, which is a shame as that could have really driven the story forward. Most of what we get, although unconventional, doesn't elevate the material. It's mostly the story of a conniving jerk who doesn't care who she hurts in the process. It's not engaging throughout the narrative and feels ultimately shallow.
There's a reason stereotypical uplifting sports films exist. They're an easy narrative to tell. Our protagonists in them are playing a final game where they either win or lose yet gain something meaningful out of the loss. Here we don't have a big competition that the film is focussed on. When the movie does hone in on the tennis tournament it's unclear where our protagonists stand in the competition. The film jumps back and forth through so many timelines that it's easy to lose track of what is taking place and when. It's a jumbled, fragmented narrative that could be told through one timeline instead of multiple ones. Why the movie jumps between years is a mystery to me.
The main draw of the film is Zendaya, who does a fine job playing a femme fatale. Zendaya is cold and condescending. Her line delivery has a consistent distance from it that matches Zendaya's usual sarcastic tone. Zendaya's performance isn't anything fantastic, but she gets the job done. Is getting the job done enough to make the movie work? No.
Neither Josh O'Connor nor Mike Faist does enough to impress me. They just pull off their role as well as it's written in the script. There's not much to make Challengers stand out. The love triangle story is basic. How Tashi gaslights both men isn't very thrilling. Worse yet, there's little chemistry between the three love birds.
Other than being a tennis trio, we don't see why these two guys would fall head over heels for this girl. What would be more interesting is a story about how Tashi's actions affect her family—or how Tashi's hurt Art and Patrick's relationship. The movie scratches the surface of Art and Patrick's link being broken by Tashi, but it lacks conflict.
Art and Patrick seem to get along just fine, where there could have been more tension to boil things up a bit in a story that's mostly dry. There's no real drive relating to the main tennis competition, and the drama between the film's three stars is lackluster. I get the film is trying to be smarter than a typical inspirational sports movie. I commend it for being different. Sadly, different isn't always enough.
