Watching Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, “Challengers,” is akin to watching a living tennis match. Sometimes it’s exciting. Sometimes it’s boring as hell. And the comparison here isn’t just a stretch made by the critic — it’s literally mentioned several times by the characters.
“Tennis is like a relationship,” Zendaya’s cool ice-queen Tashi Duncan says. “Are we talking about tennis?” player Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) asks her later, to which she responds, “We’re always talking about tennis.”
It’s one of many “huh” moments in “Challengers,” which has all the gloss and sexiness of a ’90s-era erotic thriller without any of the actual sex, despite what the Rihanna-laced trailer led us all to believe.