Challengers | Film Review

Tensions arise when tennis player-turned-coach Tashi (Zendaya) and her grand slam champion husband Art (Mike Faist) find themselves playing a tournament against Patrick (Josh O'Connor), Art's former best friend and Tashi's former boyfriend.

It's been a while that a film has been on my Twitter feed as much as this one was in the run-up to its release. I wasn't particularly keen on the concept, but I wanted to see if it was as good as everyone said it was.

Unfortunately, I didn't like the film that much, and don't really understand the hype.

For a start, I'm not a huge tennis fan. And although the film is really about these three characters and their relationships, I feel like it would be more enjoyable to a tennis fan than to someone who finds the sport boring, as I do.

None of the characters felt particularly memorable, in the sense that it would be hard to remember any meaningful things about them, outside of their relationship(s), after seeing the film. 

While the characters felt authentic (moreso than the dialogue they were given), I didn't have any positive or negative feelings about them, even when they did objectively bad things. They all felt a bit 'meh' to me.

Although Tashi is the centre of the film, I found myself much more interested in the relationship between Art and Patrick. I would have liked to see them together a bit more and, honestly, a little bit less of Tashi.

I thought the music and sound throughout the film was great. It could be a bit jarring in some scenes, but the actual pieces were beautiful. And despite not being a fan of tennis, the use of sound during the matches went a long way towards making them enjoyable.

Overall, I wasn't a huge fan. I can appreciate certain elements of the film, but from the praise it was getting, I think I went in expecting something more entertaining, thrilling and thought-provoking than it ended up being.

5/10