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Challengers<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, some sexual content, graphic nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luca Guadagnino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Justin Kuritzkes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 26, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The tennis-themed sexual drama Challengers<\/strong> was bumped from its original September release date to the final weekend of April due to the actors strike. That\u2019s the official story. I think there\u2019s more to it. It\u2019s my theory that the studio relegated it to the weekend before the summer movie season kicks off because they had no idea what to do with it. I\u2019m not sure what to make of it myself.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Technically, Challengers<\/strong> is a sports drama. It centers on tennis players playing in a big match. The two players in question were best friends at one time. Now they\u2019re rivals. Why? Why else? A girl came between them. We learn the three characters\u2019 backstory via flashbacks as the game proceeds. That\u2019s where Challengers<\/strong> strays from the road most traveled by most sports dramas. It\u2019s less about tennis than it is about the shifting power dynamics between three rather unlikable people. The two guys do whatever they can to win the girl while she sits back and plots her next move. It\u2019s not what you expect to see in a movie about sports. I think this is going to put a lot of people off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I pretty much already told you what Challengers<\/strong> is about. Now let\u2019s talk about who\u2019s in it and their characters. The star of the show is Zendaya of Euphoria and the most recent Spider-Man movies. She plays Tashi, a former tennis champ whose career was cut short by a crippling knee injury. Now she\u2019s a coach and manager. Her only client is her husband Art (Mike Faist of West Side Story) who\u2019s presently undergoing a crisis of confidence. In order to help him get his mojo back, she signs him up for a Challenger event where they unexpectedly run into Patrick (Josh O\u2019Connor from The Crown), the aforementioned ex-friend whose life didn\u2019t turn out the way he planned it. He\u2019s basically a nobody who lives out of his car while barely eking out a living in pay-for-play matches. Naturally, Tashi and Art aren\u2019t happy to see him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I\u2019m sitting at my computer trying to figure out what to say about Challengers<\/strong>. It\u2019s not often that a movie leaves me this confounded. It has some good points. The acting is quite good with Zendaya being the stand-out. However, the three principal characters are all awful. Worse, they\u2019re the only characters of note in the film. We meet a few others- e.g. Tashi\u2019s mother, a tennis official, a girl Patrick finds on a dating app- but only in passing. At 131 minutes, Challengers<\/strong> is too long and drawn out, but it\u2019s never actually boring. The tennis sequences are well shot, exciting even. The credit for that goes to cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Call Me by Your Name).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I have to be honest here. I\u2019m not the biggest fan of Guadagnino. I find most of his movies pretentious and overrated- e.g. A Bigger Splash, Call Me by Your Name. The only one of his films I like is Bones and All. For all its big ambitions, Challengers <\/strong>just didn\u2019t do it for me. I admire it but I can\u2019t say for sure what the director is going for. As such, I don\u2019t think I can recommend it. But that\u2019s just me. I\u2019m sure there are people who will think it\u2019s great. I\u2019d sure like to hear their reasons.<\/p>\r\n Challengers (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, some sexual content, graphic nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Luca Guadagnino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Justin Kuritzkes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 26, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O\u2019Connor. Rating: ** \u00a0The tennis-themed sexual drama Challengers was bumped from its original September […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Challengers-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":854,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Challengers-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C918&ssl=1\")
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