Challengers: The Art of the Rip-Off

After countless memes, TikTok breakdowns and trending X topics, I realised that I wanted to watch Challengers. Well, now I have, and now I wish I hadn’t.

I sat in the theatre more interested in my popcorn than in the actual film. Although the cinematography is beautiful—except in scenes that push you uncomfortably close to the sport—the film overwhelms every argument with its heavy-handed soundtrack (we get it, they’re going back and forth like tennis) and relies excessively on slow motion.

I felt somewhat ripped off after watching it. They promised a sexy, charged, and dramatic experience, but nothing really happens. Luca Guadagnino’s film is terribly undersexed, but I should’ve known that that’s what we signed up for when someone as squeaky clean as Zendaya is the lead. It hints and teases without any courage to go all the way, leaving one somewhat unsatisfied. The boys genuinely bonded, but their homoerotic relationship felt half-baked.

By some mercy though this film isn’t just another sports film, it has a lot more to give than that. It never focuses on the tennis itself more than its role in these characters’s lives and how connected they are to each other through it. We see Artie leverage his ability to bring Tashi within close proximity of the sport. We see how Patrick’s failure in the sport further isolates him from the new couple. We see how much Tashi wants to be as close to the sport as she can possibly get and what she’s willing to do to get her fix.

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What Actually Happens?

This guy Art is in a bit of a situation. He keeps losing in a sport he once excelled at but no longer loves, while his wife, Tashi, remains deeply passionate about it. She loves this tennis thing more than she loves him, but she engages in it the only way she can, which has been through watching and training Art ever since her career-ending injury. Incomes Patrick, the ex-lover and ex-best friend of Art and Tashi, hasn’t quite reached the same heights as his old playmate Art. This hobosexual stumbles back into their lives and forces them to confront

This film explores what happens when someone in a relationship based on a shared interest loses interest in said interest. What do they have in common now? What remains of their relationship? What happens when one can no longer live vicariously through the other? What does a person do when their dreams are cut short? It does this exploration while embedding an unhealthy amount of product placement.

Tashi doesn’t just play tennis. She loves it. She understands it on a level that neither Art or Patrick do and it reflects in the way she plays. She dominated the court and was a rising star amongst her peers. Art and Patrick’s mutual desire for her has them becoming more introspective and explorative about their current and complicated relationship. We shift between the past and present and thus flip to and from decisions and results, watching each relationship deteriorate along the way.

The movie explains why these two men are so captivated by Tashi. She’s beautiful, talented and successful, but we never get why Tashi ever bothers with these men in the first place. They don’t love tennis the way she loves tennis, so what is the rope that emotionally ties her to these two men? Does she just like that they want her, or is her desire for them purely based on what brings her in closer proximity to the sport she loves but can no longer play

A Fantasy Without a Payoff

The film indulges my female power fantasy: a man who once obsessed over me but mistreated me remains so horny and foolish years later that he throws away all his work just because I ask—plus, I get to slap him. It is, unfortunately, a film that ends with them overcoming their obstacles through “the power of friendship instead of actually getting some real raw conflict. This part totally took me out of the film because hands should have been thrown.

As expected, there was no real conclusion between them. “Who gets the girl?” “Who really won the match?”. I guess none of that mattered. At least not after you’ve watched people you don’t care for have the most formulaic conflict for 2 hours straight. There is no payoff on this film, no real conclusion. The only question I had left was, “Who was really the third?”