Culture Cabinet

Challengers tells the story of Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a ex-tennis prodigy-turned-coach, as she helps her husband, Art (Mike Faist), for a challenger tennis competition. They hope it will revive Art’s faltering tennis career, but his main competitor is his former best friend and Tashi’s ex, Patrick (Josh O’Connor). The film is directed by Luca Guadaginino, with a screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes. 

Challengers is a wild ride. It’s fast. It’s erratic. It shifts from side to side, like a tennis match, sometimes faster than what the viewer can keep up with. It wants so desperately to be a groundbreaking sports drama. It wants to pack a sexy punch. 

Unfortunately, much like Art’s tennis career, it does not live up it its potential. Instead, it offers a relatively simple, if not juvenile, love triangle story. 

Which is not to say that it’s not an entertaining watch. Guadaginino does not disappoint from a directorial standpoint, taking the audience through whirlwind POV shots from the tennis ball’s perspective, dizzying stand-offs through wind storms, and glaring Applebee’s product placement. The tension is directed well, as the constant shifting of timeline perspectives ultimately drives the film in a way that makes sense, and keeps the audience on its toes. 

The performances are also strong, with Faist and O’Connor giving particularly strong performances. Both actors manage to strike a great balance of maintaining a true “frenemy” dynamic, and perfectly master the art of letting the slow, passive aggressive tension build between their friendship, before it all implodes. 

While Zendaya gives a good performance as Tashi, she ultimately suffers the pitfall of having a character that is not served well by the screenplay. The film spends very, very little time with any other character outside of the leading trio. Of that trio, Tashi is the most interesting character, yet, she feels under-developed. 

Tashi is ruthless, competitive, and cold. She is uninterested in pursuing anything, even a romantic relationship, that does not serve her tennis career. We learn that when she first meets Art and Patrick, she’s poised to become the next tennis legend. But when a catastrophic injury renders her unable to play, her world seems to shatter. She takes up coaching as a means to continue staying in the tennis world, but her resentment towards Art is apparent. 

She clearly views his victories as her opportunity to live the life she was robbed of vicariously, and Art stays in a perpetual state of anxiety that if he cannot pull his act together, his marriage will end alongside his tennis career. Tashi does nothing to quell these fears, even going so far as using Art’s feelings as a way to manipulate him into trying harder to win. Their dynamic only offers the natural question: is Tashi in love with Art, or is she just that in love with the game he plays? 

The screenplay will not answer that question for you. Rather, it treats Tashi like some forbidden fruit for Art and Patrick to fight over. She’s a prize to be won, and the reason for their dwindling friendship. It feels a disservice to all characters involved, but especially Tashi, as Zendaya’s commitment to the character’s complexity begs for an opportunity for more development. 

When taken for what it’s worth, Challengers is an enjoyable enough watch. With technicolor lightning pace that only Guadaginino could provide, a score that will electrify your veins, and multifaceted performances from the three leads, it will keep the viewer invested from the get go. It is just not the serious sports film that it clearly believes itself to be.