Unfortunately I waited too long after seeing this to write a proper review as the site was being designed at that time so…
Date Watched
4/27/2024
Snacks
Cookie Dough Bites
Large Diet Coke
Plot Synopsis
This isn’t going to be as thorough a review as future ones will be because the details aren’t as fresh.
Essentially this movie is about 3 people Tashi (Zendaya), Patrick (John O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist).
No disrespect to the male leads but clearly the star power here is lopsided.
The movie has what I found to be a very irritating storytelling mechanic of jumping around to various time periods to tell the backstory of what is going on in the present day which is another reason it is hard to recap in a linear fashion.
Essentially everyone is a tennis player and Tashi is a top prospect at 18 and Patrick and Tom are skilled as well… and totally enamored with Tashi.
At some sort of tennis event they convince Tashi to come back to their room afterwards and hang out.
The next day Patrick and Art are scheduled to face each other in the finals of whatever event they are at.
We learn that Patrick is the typical outgoing rich kid fuckboi persona and Art is his beta male simp sidekick.
Tashi teases them with a 3 way but in the end says she will date whichever of them wins.
We don’t see the match but we jump forward into the future (not present day mind you… but they also jump there at times… its a mess) where we see them all in college and PAtrick (apparently having won the match) is dating Tashi… and is acting like every alpha male asshole you ever met and not treating her well, meanwhile Art is acting like every /r/niceguy simp you ever met working the “I can’t believe he treats you like that…” angle to break them up (that’s not even my interpretation… Patrick literally calls him on it at one point) while Tashi tolerates Patrick, and strings along Art… because everyone in this movie is a terrible person.
In the next scene Tashi gets badly injured in a match and Art is there to help her and Patrick is late and they both tell him to fuck off.
Jump forward to present day we learn that Art is now a top tennis player in the world… or was before some sort of injury that is barely mentioned, and now he is making a come back despite his heart clearly not being in it. Oh and he and Tashi are married now, have a kid, and she is his coach and manger.
Meanwhile Patrick (despite it being established that he is a rich kid earlier in the movie) is now a down on his luck low level pro that is sleeping in his car and trying to get into a low level tournament .
Meanwhile Art tells Tashi he wants to retire, but she wants him to try and win the US Open before he does as apparently it is the only major tournament he never won.
They argue and compromise on him entering a smaller tournament to get his confidence back… and of course it ends up being the same one Patrick is in.
Stuff happens and it builds to Patrick and Art being in the finals together.
There is another flashback to sometime after Tashi and Art are married where they are in the same town as Patrick for some reason that escapes me, and Tashi sleeps with Patrick.
Back in present day Tashi runs into Patrick and makes it clear she hates him and to stay away from them etc because he is a loser.
Then we eventually get to the night before the finals and Art again tells Tashi he wants to retire.
They argue again and she tells him if he loses she will leave him.
She then goes and meets up with Patrick who earlier had asked her to coach him and gave her his number.
She tells him she wants him to lose to Art in the finals because that’s what it will take for him to get his confidence back… Patrick assumes she is there to sleep with him, she says she’s not but she will if that’s what it takes to get him to throw the match.
They argue some more and he goes to take her back but she forces him to stop… and then they indeed have sex.
When she gets back to their hotel she finds Art asleep in their kids room rather than their bed where she left him.
The final match happens and it is unclear if Patrick is going to throw it or not… it gets down to whatever you call sudden death/overtime in tennis’s unnecessarily complicated scoring system, and Patrick reveals to Art that he slept with Tashi the night before during their set via a ;gesture that they showed earlier in the movie that I didn’t mention.
They end up in a whoever gets the next point wins situation (because its a sports movie and of course it has to) and after a long exchange they meet up close to each other at the net with Art jumping and Patrick catching him, and the winner being left ambiguous… and scene.
My Take
This started off slow, and had an irritating format with all the time jumping. I also hated all 3 characters and somehow wanted them all to lose in the end.
That said it wasn’t terrible and I wasn’t tempted to walk out at various points, and the pacing was good enough to make it watchable.
Score
**1/4
Challengers Review After Credits
I remembered more of it than I thought when I started writing.
Overall this movie wasn’t good… I don’t think the tennis was realistic enough to make tennis fans like it, though admittedly I am not a tennis fan so that’s just a guess.
I guess in a way the characters were realistic because I know people that are like all 3 of them… but they are all bad people and its not super enjoyable to watch a movie with no one you root for so overall I can’t see ever watching this again.
Check out our first official review on The Saturday Movie Blog as I Review The Fall Guy