Marty Supreme Review: Timothée Chalamet Is Excellent, The Movie… Not So Much

⭐ Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Marty Supreme

Directed by Josh Safdie

Written by Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein

Starring Timothee Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler The Creator, Odessa A'zion

Release Date December 25th, 2025

A Wave of Hype and One Very Exhausted Viewer

I don’t get it. I simply don’t get the appeal of Marty Supreme.

For months, the buzz surrounding this movie was enormous. Timothée Chalamet was being hailed as delivering a career-defining performance. Josh Safdie was being praised as if he’d reinvented cinema. And because the film was one of the last screeners sent to members of the Critics Choice Association, anticipation only grew.

By 20 minutes in, I was exhausted.

Marty Supreme is an obnoxious movie about an obnoxious character I could not stand to be around. I kept waiting for the hook — the moment when the film’s awards-season energy would click into place. Instead, I sat there wondering how I had been convinced that this was one of the year’s “must-see” contenders.

The Plot: A Ping-Pong Prodigy and Professional Menace

At the center of Marty Supreme is Marty Mauser, a young ping-pong prodigy with a primordial hustle-culture brain. Marty never stops moving, never stops talking, and certainly never pauses to doubt his own self-mythology. He’s a terrible person — ignoring responsibilities, family, and basic decency — but because he’s great at ping-pong, the film frames this as forgivable.

I found the premise absurd. Why does no one in this universe think his behavior is insane?

Marty lies, cheats, and hustles his way into a championship tournament and a luxury hotel room. There, he meets fading movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). Marty immediately pushes his way into her life — and, unbelievably, it works. She attends his match and sleeps with him, despite being married.

Then he approaches her husband for sponsorship money. Because why not? If a man built his fortune selling writing utensils, surely he should bankroll a self-obsessed ping-pong player.

Naturally, Marty blows the deal. He returns home nearly arrested, suspended from competition, and drowning in bills the organizers never agreed to cover.

And It Gets Worse… Much Worse

Before leaving town, Marty impregnates a married woman named Rachel (Odessa A’zion). Then he disappears for nine months to tour the world doing ping-pong tricks with the Harlem Globetrotters.

When he returns, he barely acknowledges her pregnancy, denies the child is his, and insults her husband before running from the police yet again.

This is our “hero.” This is the guy we’re meant to root for.

Safdie’s Filmmaking: High Pressure, Low Stakes

To be fair, Josh Safdie never takes his foot off the gas. The film is relentless, a breathless pressure cooker in the same spirit as Uncut Gems, which he directed with his brother Benny.

But unlike Uncut Gems, the stakes here feel laughably small.

Adam Sandler’s character lived on the edge of a cliff; Marty is worried about… becoming the best ping-pong player in the world. The film treats this as mythic. I found it borderline comedic. The intensity feels misplaced, like a sports-movie parody that forgot it was supposed to be a parody.

The Good: Gorgeous Cinematography and Production Design

There are highlights.

The film’s 1950s aesthetic is stunning. The production design is meticulous, and Darius Khondji’s cinematography is outstanding — textured, lived-in, alive. Visually, it’s one of the most impressive films of the season.

But none of that rescues the experience when the protagonist is so profoundly unbearable that spending over two hours with him feels like punishment.

Timothée Chalamet Gives Everything — Maybe Too Much

Chalamet reportedly trained for years to play ping-pong convincingly. You can see the effort. He’s fully committed, physically and emotionally.

But I couldn’t escape the fact that, in the end, we’re talking about ping-pong. I couldn’t take Forrest Gump’s table-tennis arc seriously either, and at least Forrest wasn’t insufferable.

Marty Mauser might be one of the most obnoxious characters ever brought to the screen. The craft is there — but the soul is missing.

Final Verdict

Marty Supreme is stylish, intense, and anchored by a wildly committed Timothée Chalamet performance. But it’s also grating, exhausting, and centered on a character so aggressively unpleasant that the film collapses under its own concept.

If this is what peak ping-pong cinema looks like, I think I’ll stick to watching people actually play ping-pong.

⭐ 2 out of 5 stars

Tagsl

• Marty Supreme Review

• Timothee Chalamet

• Josh Safdie

• Movie Reviews 2025

• Awards Season Movies

• Film Criticism

• A24 Films (if applicable)

• Gwyneth Paltrow

• Odessa A’zion

• Ping Pong Movie