Cropped "Challengers" movie poster
Challengers — Zendaya’s new romantic sports drama set in the world of tennis — is new in theaters.
Playing in previews Thursday night and opening nationwide in theaters Friday, Challengers is the hotly anticipated movie from the Euphoria star that was originally scheduled to open in theaters on September 15, 2023.
However, due to disruptions in the entertainment industry during the Screen Actors Guild strike against the studios last summer into fall, Challengers’ studio, Amazon MGM, pushed back the release date to April 26.
Directed by Call Me By Your Name filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, Challengers tracks the love triangle between three gifted tennis players — Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) — and hops back and forth between the time Patrick and Art met Tashi in 2006 and the film’s crucial tennis match in 2019.
The film begins with the 2019 match between Patrick and Art — once close friends and doubles partners in the youth tennis circuit — who have become bitter rivals after Toshi begins dating Patrick. Art — who was just as smitten as Patrick was when they both met Tashi 13 years before — never lost his love for her and they marry and have a child together after she suffers a crushing career-ending injury.
In addition to marrying Art, Tashi is the tennis pro’s coach. However, since Art has a confidence problem that may prevent him from reaching the pinnacle of his career, she talks her husband into entering the Challenger tournament, which includes Patrick. Unfortunately, that means Art will eventually face his old friend in a match and the two will need confront their past wounds.
At the time of publication, Challengers had received a stellar reception from critics on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, where it has earned a 92 percent “fresh” rating on the site’s Tomatometer based on 157 reviews.
What Are Top Critics Saying About ‘Challengers’?
Challengers has scored consistently high with some of the biggest outlets in the nation, particularly with the industry’s trade publications.
Calling Luca Guadagnino’s sports-romance combo “hip, sexy and ridiculously overheated,” Variety critic Peter Debruge has mostly positive things to say about Challengers. Debruge not only praises the trio of leads — he calls Zendaya’s performance “astonishing” — but he’s also impressed by Luca Guadagnino’s creative filmmaking, especially in scenes on the tennis court.
“Whether audiences identify as Team Patrick or Team Art, Guadagnino pulls a risky yet inspired trick, effectively scoring the winning shot himself,” Debruge wrote.
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter is just as high on Challengers, as he begins his review by writing how the film is “smart, seductive and bristling with sexual tension.” Rooney also calls the chemistry between Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist “off the charts.”
Like Debruge, Rooney praises the cinematography of Challengers as well as the film’s “peppy dialogue,” even though he writes, “In terms of nuts-and-bolts narrative, Challengers is relatively thin.”
Art (Mike Faist), Tashi (Zendaya) and Patrick (Josh O'Connor) in a scene from "Challengers."
Not every critic is as enthusiastic about Challengers as Debruge, Rooney or their Rotten Tomatoes counterparts.
Mark Feeney gives Challengers 2.5 stars (out of four) in his review for the Boston Globe pointing out that, unlike the Will Smith tennis movie King Richard, Challengers is “only masquerading as a tennis movie — extensively masquerading to be sure.”
Instead, Feeney said Challengers “really is a soap opera, a lively and very trickily structured one.”
Richard Whittaker of the Austin Chronicle, meanwhile, slams Challengers in his 1 star (out of 5) review, saying the movie is a “double fault after double fault.”
In particular, Whittaker goes after Guadagnino and his screenwriter, saying the director “rolls into the courtside thriller with all the sex appeal of a gym sock and a lousy script by Justin Kuritzkes, the poor man’s Whit Stillman. It’s trashy Eurosleaze with none of the sumptuous debauchery.”
Challengers is now in theaters.
