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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nSince \u201cChallengers\u201d begins practically at the end of its story, I think I\u2019ll begin this review by talking about the movie\u2019s ending. It ends, as we see in early scenes and is pretty predictable anyway, with feuding tennis stars Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O\u2019Connor) playing against each other in the finals of a tournament, with Art\u2019s wife Tashi (Zendaya) watching from the stands. While ultimately one player will have to win and one will have to lose, the real winners are fans of great tennis. As with the match, \u201cChallengers\u201d doesn\u2019t concern itself with things like results and fate, it just wants to give you a thrill in getting there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2019 match between Art and Patrick is a framing device that we see throughout the film, but the story is mostly told through flashbacks, not all necessarily told in order. We go as far back as 2006 when Art and Patrick were doubles champions and best friends. They found themselves both smitten with up-and-comer Tashi, and they invited her back to their shared hotel room. A minor conflict arose when the two couldn\u2019t work out who between them would get some alone time with Tashi. They figured that she\u2019d give an indication of who she\u2019d prefer, but Tashi\u2026didn\u2019t pick a side. Maybe it\u2019s just me reading too much into things, but I think the film\u2019s advertising has implied that more happens in the ensuing encounter. It\u2019s just a makeout scene with Tashi promising her phone number to the winner of an upcoming match between the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Patrick wins the match and Tashi\u2019s phone number, and he soon turns pro with Tashi as his girlfriend. Tashi and Art both attend Stanford with plans to turn pro after college, but also have some additional skills if tennis doesn\u2019t work out. A jealous Art engineers a fight between Patrick and Tashi, and although he didn\u2019t intend it to go quite so far, he\u2019s the only one there to comfort Tashi when she suffers a career-ending injury on the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years later, Art has become an international superstar with Tashi as his wife and coach (though their marriage is hanging by a thread), while Patrick\u2019s career and life have deteriorated so badly that he\u2019s living out of his car. Apparently too much time away from Tashi will do that to a man. Art and Patrick both have to win this small-time tournament, Art to gain momentum going into the U.S. Open, Patrick to resurrect his fledgling career. Of course, they\u2019re really battling over Tashi all over again, as well as trying to one-up each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mentioned this movie wanting to give its viewers a thrill on par with the intense final tennis match. After the early stages culminating in the scene in the hotel room, the movie pairs off Art, Patrick, and Tashi in combinations of two for the rest of the movie. The three banter, argue, and manipulate one another in a series of scenes whose snappiness is worthy of the comparison to a well-contested match. It\u2019s not exactly a nail-biting intensity, but the three keep up with each other in a complimentary fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where \u201cChallengers\u201d fell apart for me (aside from my inability to understand tennis scoring, so I kept thinking the climactic match was over when it wasn\u2019t, which affected the movie\u2019s momentum) was the utter un-likeability of the three main characters. Yes, they have good chemistry, but that\u2019s just another way of saying that these miserable people all deserve one another. It\u2019s one thing to cultivate conflicting opinions about who to root for because it makes for a lively debate. But did the movie have to make me wish that all three characters could lose somehow? I read an interview with Mike Faist where he described the characters\u2019 dynamic as \u201ceveryone\u2019s right and everyone\u2019s wrong.\u201d Ironically he\u2019s only right about the \u201ceveryone\u2019s wrong\u201d part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cChallengers\u201d is rated R for language throughout, some sexual content and graphic nudity. Its running time is 131 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver Since \u201cChallengers\u201d begins practically at the end of its story, I think I\u2019ll begin this review by talking about the movie\u2019s ending. It ends, as we… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2689],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59332,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59329\/revisions\/59332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}