If you’re a fan of Zendaya or romance films in general, then you must have heard of “Challengers.” The film follows Tashi, a former tennis player now turned coach, as she navigates the struggles with helping her husband return to professional tennis after an injury. However, she faces conflict in doing so when a certain person from their past turns up as a competitor in the tournament.
The movie starts out with Art, played by Mike Faist, and Patrick, played by Josh O’Connor, playing each other in a challenger in New York. This part is set in the present day, and introduced Tashi and Art’s relationship, and how it is mainly centered around tennis. However, you could automatically tell that Tashi loved tennis more than Art did, which led viewers to wonder why she wasn’t the one playing, and opened up a new gateway of excitement for viewers.
As you progress towards the movie, you could tell that it consists of two plots, the past and present. The two moments from the past I found the most interesting was Tashi first meeting the boys when they were teenagers and how her dating life evolved into the present day. Art and Patrick first started off as best friends who played doubles in tennis; however, their relationship became a bit rocky when they fell for Tashi. Although I am a sucker for love triangles, this affair was a bit too hard to keep up with. From the beginning, it seemed like she was more interested in Art, but then things progressed and she eventually ended up dating Patrick, or so we thought. Then Tashi, made the decision to marry Art before running into Patrick again as an adult and rekindling an old flame with him.
Towards the middle of the film, viewers finally got to see why Tashi stopped playing tennis, a knee injury. It kind of concentrated back again on the Challenger game, where Patrick and Art crossed paths after years of not seeing each other. During this game, it was interesting to see their dynamic on court compared to how it was in the flashbacks; however, these presents scenes weren’t as exciting as the flashbacks, and they just consisted of Patrick and Art giving each other dirty looks and signals across the room. Overall, the movie wasn’t that good, the only plot was the relationship between Art, Patrick and Tashi which was very hard to keep up with. Also, one thing that was annoying was the scenes from the present was that they were only set at the Challenger game, and the only thing centered around tennis throughout the movie was who was going to win between Art and Patrick which wasn’t that exciting.
I would give this movie a 6/10. The idea and concept of the relationship was interesting, but I believe it wasn’t executed as well. At times, the movie just seemed very repetitive, and it was hard to keep up with whom Tashi wanted. Overall, I would recommend watching this movie if you’re bored, and don’t really have anything to do.
