Film Review: Challengers (2024)

A power triangle with Tennis and Zendaya in the middle.  Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers highlights the young star’s charisma.  

Challengers feels like it’s going to be about the actor in the center of its advertisements – Zendaya.  The young actor has been building towards something substantial.  The promise of her still unknown depths of talent.  Given a role about a Superstar in the making whose career is cut short by an injury.  What happens when an alpha athlete is left without the very thing that defined all of her life?  Fertile ground for an actor whose talents far outweighed her prior roles.  

This isn’t that movie.  

The film as scripted and directed is essentially a modern update to Bull Durham set in the hard-charging world of men’s tennis. The film is more concerned with the two male tennis pros (played by Mike Feist and Josh O’Connor).  Their relationship seems to be pulled from the much more complex relationship of Y Tu Mama Tambien’s male counterparts who lust after a woman beyond their league (more succulently their universe).  Think of the highlight/mix tape version of those two films mashed together resulting in something less articulate and complex. 

This is where all the issues of the film come up.  There is nothing we haven’t seen and done better than it’s done here.  Nothing is sexy.  Nothing is complex.  Nothing is challenging.  Director Guadagnino does his best to elevate the material, sort of.  There is something that feels amiss here. None of what could have made this a truly wicked tale of sex (not love, there is no love here) triangle of three selfish gorgeous people (are there any other kind of gorgeous person?) vying for power is present here.  There’s a few laughs.  A few naughty moments.  A few arguments.  One long tennis match.  That’s it. 

The primary issue with Challengers is its refusal to tell the story that it should have told.  The only character that anyone cares about from the opening moments is Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan.  An alpha’s alpha (think Serena Williams) who has no time for boy’s games of courtship and concedes just because she finds the competitive nature in line with what she needs.  Though the script by Justin Kuritzkes cares nothing of Duncan nor telling her story. 

Rather the script finds the battles of Art Donaldson (Feist) and Patrick Zweig (O’Connor) the story it needs to tell.  One can feel the film drag into a perfunctory cliché sports story by the time they sideline Tashi and Zendaya with the injury and all the cliches that come with it.  The star does everything she can to elevate the film.  Every moment she’s in though becomes a supporting moment for Feist and O’Connor and their back and forth for the affections of Duncan.  Hampered by these moments the film falters and never recovers to the heights of the first thirty minutes when one thinks the film is leading to a more complex character study. 

Special mention does need to be made of Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for their propulsive score, and the ace Cinematography of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom.  Their collaboration with Guadagnino along with the adroit editing of Marco Costa keeps things move in the robust 131-minute runtime.  

In the end similar to Dune 2, Challengers biggest asset, Zendaya remains sidelined for most of the film and relegated to supporting her male co-stars.  Here though, the star shines brighter than all.  One hopes that Zendaya finds something that will not just challenge her but give her the superstar treatment she deserves.  

 

Challengers is only in theaters April 26^th