A Challenge to Watch
Obviously you saw my title, I did not like Zendaya’s new movie Challengers. However, I will do my best to give the best review possible. I do need to say something first. I was not necessarily excited or looking forward to this movie as it wasn’t one that caught my eye as I watched the trailers, but I saw that 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and I was going to give it the best shot.
Challengers follows Tashi Duncan, a tennis phenom turned coach as she trains her husband who was a mediocre player, at best, so he can become a grand slam champion. Critics praise this movie’s outstanding performances, and never dropping the ball.
I feel so much differently than the critics. In every aspect I felt like this movie did drop the ball. The whole time I felt like I was watching a high budget Disney channel movie, and maybe that’s all Zendaya does, but I’ll get to that later. The story is told in a nonlinear way with the past and present happening throughout the whole movie and usually I don’t mind this. This year’s Best Picture winner Oppenheimer was told that way and so many other stories have been told that way, but the whole time I was just confused. I get that the match that the tennis players were playing in the end represented their relationship and how the past had gone, but everything else about the movie took me out.
I am a strong believer that music can be one of the most important parts of any movie, but it is never the most part of the movie, unless it’s a musical. In that case, the music is a huge let down. It was either techno club music or some weird slow piano. Every time I heard any music, I couldn’t help but laugh. It took me completely out of the movie, and I constantly was thinking that I could’ve been doing something better than watching this movie.
If you’re someone like me and you have seen the trailers for this movie, you probably would think it is a porno, and you're close. While there aren’t technically any sex scenes, in this movie, there might as well have been. The entire movie is driven by two down-bad guys simply trying to get laid. Challengers basically came out and said, “Look everyone! Zendaya is hot. Come see the movie.” I gotta say, that’s a good technique they’ve got going on because so many people love this movie.
For me, this movie reached the “it’s so bad it might be good” category. I was trying to hold in my laughter a few too many times while watching. Like I said before, this felt like a very high budget Disney channel movie. Cringey dialogue and a story that is sometimes made for kids at its core: two guys fighting over a girl. This movie was so weird and so confusing. Randomly for about 15 seconds they decided to give one of the tennis players a GoPro and have them play and it was amazing. Pure comedic value. They also gave us the point of view of the tennis ball for about 15 seconds, and again, pure comedic value.
Now I am starting to ask if Zendaya really has that “it” factor to be a legitimate star. Undoubtedly she is one of the biggest actresses of today, but in so many of her movies she is outshined. Respectfully, being in three Spider-Man movies won’t help your case because top tier acting is not the priority in those, but what else has she been in? Euphoria is seemingly down the drain and she can’t go back to her Disney channel show. I know people will disagree simply because she is one of the biggest actresses on the planet, but I simply cannot buy into it right now.
Overall, Challengers is not worth the hype. It has weird decisions all over the place, and what I felt were sometimes unnecessary time jumps. It felt unnatural for a movie like this to be told in a nonlinear fashion. Sex was a selling point in this movie and I really hope we can move past that. It doesn’t have to be in everything we watch and for how much it was marketed for this movie, there wasn’t even a full sex scene. Either way, I’d rather watch Oppenheimer with my mom and not be able to fast forward than watch this with her. My overall score is a shockingly low, 18.
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