🎬 Challengers (2024) | A Sexy Tennis Romantic Comedy

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This blog is a personal journal of all the movies, Tv-Shows, & Games I consume during a year which enhances my overall experience. The ratings that I give are fully based on my personal preference and enjoyment at the time of watching and I'm writing spoiler-free reviews. (All HBD earnings are used to get extra Hive Power Delegations!)

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What I knew going into Challengers is that it's known as the "Zendaya Threesome Movie" and that it gets surprisingly positive reviews accross the board. So it has always been a movie that I wanted to watch but I never found the right time or mood for it until yesterday. I play tennis myself and we are into the time of the year when I actually follow it with Roland Garros and Wimbledon. So I though I might as well fully get into it and also finally watch this movie to see what it's all about and form my own opinion. I had no specific ecpectations aside from that fact that I would be surprised to dislike it. I also watched it quite late in the evening/night after somewhat of an off-day so there was some danger of fatique with the 2 Hours and 11 Minute Playtime.

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Challengers (7.1/10)

The basically the movie is about a love triangle between 3 "Professional" Tennis players. It starts with a tennis scene introducing 2 players in a Challengers Tournament (that's one of the reasons why the movie is called Challengers) which turns out to be part of the final scene of the movie. The movie pretty much goes back and forward in time constantly not to a point where it's overly complicated but it is a bit much a times.

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After that scene it starts of pretty staightforward introducing the character of Art Donaldson who is married and has a kid with Tashi. He's supposed to be a famous grand slam winning Tennis Player who is kind of near the end of his career and lacks form so his wife and coach enters him into a challengers Tournament so he can find his winning ways again with an eye to enter the next grand slam.

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This was followed by the introduction of another lower-ranked tennis player who struggling to bet by and could not afford to pay the hotel fee so he slept in his car. The start of the movie kind of felt a bit generic as they were spoon feeding everything a bit too much for me but I just went with it.

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After this it cuts back I believe 13 years where 2 fiends play against eachother in a college match and where also the Zendaya character is introduced. For a long time I kind of thought there were 3 male players but it turns out that the Zweig player from the start is actually the opponent in the end match. They kind of both have a crush on Zendaya and she beyond their expectation shows up after they invite her to their place.

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From here on out I would say the movie really starts with the love triangle and power games it all really is about.

Movie Plot (Spoiler Free):

"Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, transformed her husband into a champion. But to overcome a recent losing streak and redeem himself, he'll need to face off against his former best friend and Tashi's ex-boyfriend."

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One of the things I was affraid of was that the tennis play of these actors would not look antwhere close to that of a real tennis player but it turned out that this was not really an issue at all and it all kind of felt believable enough. One of the things the film did very well was camera angles and the way a lot of the tennis scenes were filmed. Many times, I really went like 'that's a really original angle and shot" but after a while and near the end of the film it all started to become a bit old and overkill to the point where it even was a bit annoying. So I would say that the director pressed that button a but too hard and too much. The music during the Tennis scenes also was ok but

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There was aslo some philosopical talk in this movie which kind of felt forced into it and was not needed and I was kind of confused by the ending which made me need to watch some youtube explained videos afterward to fully understand it.

Challengers Trailer

Conclusion
Overall I just had a good time with this movie even though it wasn't perfect. The overall story and idea about it were good and it managed to go beyond one of those generic sports movie. There were also many good aspects abouyt this film like the switching in time, film angles, music but all of them feel like they just overdone it a bit too much and less of it would have been more. Overall, I give it a solid 7.1/10 and I would say that the general praise this movie gets is justified while I also don't see it as anything more.

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