Challengers

I give zero fucks about tennis. I have never in my life, not even once, given a single fuck about tennis. Absolute FUCK ALL. And yet I was at the edge of my seat the entire time, gnawing at my fingetips because I already chewed away out my fingernails within the first twenty minutes of Zendaya serving fuckass bob realness.  The color grading. The composition. The character dynamic and the ACTING: so so so fucking dramatic. Don’t even get me started on the score. I should have known Trent Reznor had his dirty little industrial fingers all over that main title but I was too busy swooning over the crispness of that camera work during the main match to pinpoint it. Crisp is exactly the word I’d use to describe this movie; everything just felt like a breath of fresh air.  Oh and also did I mention the tension? I honestly just wanted to see this movie for Zendaya and for the techno music but I got so invested in those tennis twunks messy little love story. There was definitely something there that could have needed more exploring without a third party involved, but that would mean Zendaya having less screentime and that would be criminal. So I’m fine with having just gay undertones this time around. Although I guess calling whatever the tennis twunks had “gay undertones” would be a disservice to the sound editors meticulously putting in gay pornstar moaning soundbites whenever one of them hit the ball. For the record, that sauna scene was just unreal. Every scene was just unreal. It felt like I was gonna get snapped in the face with a rubber band the entire time. Tension was running HIGH. Sports wishes they were this adrenaline inducing.  Anyways I’m done riding Zendays’s massive tennis racket, it’s time to listen to the main title on repeat x