Challengers

Well I have been slacking on my movies so I am just now getting to Challengers. I love Zendaya with my whole heart so I really can’t wait to see her front and center. In press for this movie Zendaya says that you really have to watch the movie 3 times and focus on a different character each time, I’m not sure if we are actually going to do that but I will make sure that each character gets their due. So here we go with Challengers.

Right off the bat there is more action than dialogue which, if you have read my reviews, is my favorite thing. Film is a visual medium so when a script and a director chooses to highlight that I think the film is automatically better off. You should never rely on words to tell your story in a MOVIE. We are watching it for a reason. So much can be done in the silence. And that’s not to say that dialogue isn’t an important part of storytelling, it is. But if you are only talking then you aren’t letting your actors fully fill out their characters.

So Art and Patrick were best buddies and Tashi was on her way to being an adult pro tennis player when they all met.

Zendaya being an actual dancer and white girl dancing at the beginning of this movie is actually hilarious. Zendaya is really so stunningly beautiful. She’s literally glowing.

Classic best friends having a falling out over a girl, though I am willing to guess that their falling out was more because of tennis then the girl. Tashi was just the icing on the cake. These friends clearly have a deep love for each other. And the real world might be tainting my perception here but they feel very gay. When Tashi asked about it, Art was adamantly against it and Patrick seemed very into it actually.

Tashi makes out with both of them, which is a little questionable because she knows that they're best friends. But Zendaya can do no wrong so here we are. Oh she just likes having control.

The jumps back and forth in time are actually making this very fun to watch. More and more emotion gets offered with every flashback and I think that's a really great storytelling device. Flashback's are so easy to overuse or misuse altogether but in this movie they are utilized really well.

Patrick sucks. He really is out here dating girls on Tinder so he has a place to sleep for the night.

Something really bad happened. Tashi had some venom for Patrick when he came up to her.

Okay so Patrick dated her first. I can see exactly why that didn’t work out. He’s arrogant and brash. Art is sweet, he understands her immediately. Is that why they hate each other? No, there was some kind of accident because Tashi got injured and can’t play anymore and Art is still recovering from something. Prediction; Art, Tashi and Patrick were all in a car accident or something and it was Patrick’s fault yet he came out unscathed.

Art seems to be actively trying to break Tashi and his best friend up. So they all suck a little bit? Okay, I can live with that. I really need to know what the crux of this falling out was though. Tashi needs to coach her man. She needs to be better. She needs to be close to the professional world of tennis. Now the fact that she is better than Patrick seems irrelevant because his arrogance makes him think that he’s her peer.

So that's it? Tashi and Patrick get into one fight and she breaks her knee and that's it? That’s what leads to the end of her career and their falling out? That is extremely anticlimactic. So Art gets injured in a completely separate situation? I’m sorry but that feels lazy. Especially since it happened in a normal college match, not even like a match for her to go pro. I feel like that could have been written better.

Post injury Tashi I understand with all my heart and soul. I know exactly what it's like to have a sport you love ripped away from you by something out of your control. To never be able to do it again at the level that you used to. For that level to be extremely high, to be able to see yourself as a professional and just not be able to get there because your body craps out. It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. And Zendaya portrays it incredibly well.

Their whole falling out was Tashi’s injury??? That is some weak shit ass writing right there. Good lord there were like 10 better options that I came up with off the top of my head, small adjustments that would have made this story 1000X stronger.

And then she cheats on Art with Patrick? Sorry but that doesn’t even make any sense. TWICE. K. Tashi sucks.

Fuck yeah Art. Him telling off Patrick in the sauna is probably the best scene in the movie. Patrick sucks. Tashi is questionable but casting Zendaya was a good move. Art is the only character that I love. So are we just not gonna find out what happened to Art? He has a physical therapist, Tashi said that she’d kill for a recovery like his, so what happened?

Through their little best friend code, Patrick tells Art DURING THE MATCH that he had sex with Tashi. Which is actually insane. Art is the only one I really care about here and he wants to stop playing tennis anyway, so I kinda hope he just quits.

They really dragged this final scene out as long as they possibly could. There is like 20 minutes worth of slow motion for no reason at all. And then the random camera work changes in the back half of the movie were a bit much. It was very disorienting. And then they just end in a friend hug? After dude just told you he slept with your wife? And we never find out what Art was recovering from? LAME.

Overall I think it was a decent movie, it just could have been so much better. My biggest pet peeve is when a fine movie could have been great, and wasn’t because the writers didn’t bother to see and explore the potential that they had. I’m sorry but as a writer if you don’t set your story up and at least storyboard through all possible options that you can think of, you are lazy and you are doing your story a disservice. The movie could have been a 9/10 but they just wasted so much good set up. So it lives in the middle at a 7/10 the performances being its saving grace.