'Challengers' Chickens Out (no spoilers)

I looked forward to ‘Challengers’ for months. There are, strangely, few films like it anymore: multiplex-friendly, mid-budget romances promising a sexy fun time with some of the most watchable actors of the next generation. I did have a fun time, and—despite the laughably intense soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—it’s well worth seeing in a theater. But the film has a hollowness at its core. Centered on a tennis-themed love triangle between two former doubles partners (played by Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) who pine for the same girl/woman (Zendaya), ‘Challengers’ definitively exposes its lead actress’s limitations as a performer. She’s got presence and she looks fantastic in clothes, but she doesn’t convey emotional nuance very well, and the whole point of her (rather underwritten) character is that she is conflicted.

I wouldn’t have even minded Faist and Josh O’Connor out-acting their mega-watt co-star in every scene if all the sexual tension had paid off. But the film is buildup, buildup, buildup, then a numbing letdown. Based on his previous work, I thought director Luca Guadagnino would give his audience more credit, but I felt unwantedly coddled by the resolution, like when an adult flashes the Fruit of Knowledge before a child, then says, You can try it when you’re older. I wanted more bite. I wanted more substance. I wanted more juice.

-Inkoo

—My favorite 2024 movie thus far remains Love Lies Bleeding, starring Kristen Stewart as a small-town idler who falls for a temperamental, nomadic body builder played by Katy O’Brian. This beautiful review, from my friend Amy Nicholson, gets a lot at why I loved it so much.

—I wrote about HBO’s The Sympathizer, an adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning novel that is very much informed by co-showrunner Park Chan-wook’s excesses.

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—“Bennett Braun, Psychiatrist Who Fueled ‘Satanic Panic,’ Dies at 83.” A thorough obituary of a deeply flawed and deeply influential quack.

—“The Thing About Ryan Gosling.” I loved this Angelica Jade Bastién deconstruction of his strengths as an actor.

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