Close Menu
  • Login
  • Support Us
  • Newsletter
  • News
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Video Games
      • Previews
      • PC
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X/S
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Xbox One
      • PS4
      • Tabletop
    • Film
    • TV
    • Anime
    • Comics
      • BOOM! Studios
      • Dark Horse Comics
      • DC Comics
      • IDW Publishing
      • Image Comics
      • Indie Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • Oni-Lion Forge
      • Valiant Comics
      • Vault Comics
  • Podcast
  • More
    • Event Coverage
    • BWT Recommends
    • RSS Feeds
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Support Us
But Why Tho?
RSS Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube
Trending:
  • Features
    Marvel's Spider-Man Secret Lair promotional image

    Get a Look At the Secret Lair x Marvel’s Spider-Man Superdrop

    09/08/2025
    Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions gameplay still

    Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions Is All About Adventure (with Friends)

    09/08/2025
    Chord in Persona 5 The Phantom X

    Now Is The Perfect Time To Jump Back In ‘Persona 5: The Phantom X’

    09/05/2025
    Cosmic Spider-Man card details

    [EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW] The Spider-Man Set Gets A 5-Color Legendary Spider

    09/02/2025
    Lee Corso from College Football GameDay in EA Sports games

    EA Sports Always Understood Lee Corso’s Legacy

    09/01/2025
  • Indie Games
  • K-Dramas
  • Netflix
  • Apple TV+
But Why Tho?
Home » Film » REVIEW: ‘Challengers’ Serves Up A Seductive Match

REVIEW: ‘Challengers’ Serves Up A Seductive Match

Kate SánchezBy Kate Sánchez04/12/20246 Mins ReadUpdated:09/04/2025
Challengers (2024) Poster Art
Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit WhatsApp Email

Competitive sport is an intimate connection; when it’s one-on-one, it can get romantic. Distributed by MGM Studios (Metro Goldwyn Mayer), Challengers is filmmaker Luca Guadagnino‘s latest take on romance and tension, written by Justin Kuritzkes. The movie stars Zendaya (Dune: Part Two) as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach. With “sorry” strongly omitted from her vocabulary, Tashi always puts tennis first. She’s married to a world-famous champion on a losing streak, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, West Side Story).

Coach Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption involves heading to the bottom of the tennis world and making him a Slam champion at the lowest level first to restore his self-esteem. But, it takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick (Josh O’Connor, The Crown) – his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. As their pasts and present collide and tensions run high, Tashi finds herself bouncing between the two once again.

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Despite the official synopsis and marketing material focusing on Zendaya’s Tashi, Challengers isn’t Zendaya’s film. Replicated in the film’s final moments, the opening act makes Challengers into a tennis match between Art and Patrick. That means that Zendaya is just the ball. Propelled back and forth between the two, Zendaya’s Tashi may be a tennis prodigy and the mastermind behind Art’s professional success, but she is a prop.

Mike Faist, Zendaya, and Jake O'Connor in Challengers

Her story is only ever told from the eyes of the man who wants her, and that’s it. Had the key art poster not just been a close-up of her face and the trailer not centered on Tashi’s injury and story, her sidelining wouldn’t have been an issue. But by using Zendaya’s bankability, Challengers undercuts the narrative it sold audiences before the film began. Tashi’s success, injury, and body are all used to prop up the men, change their course, and pass between them as they compete for her eye.

This isn’t to say that Zendaya’s performance isn’t fantastic. It surely is. Her ability to always embody pure aggression and self-worth helps her mold the men to change the men around her. However, as she changes them, they’re also pushing back. She has to take care of them. She is their mother, their lover, and their catalyst for success. She is their everything. That said, despite the poster showing the men in her glasses, we see her through their perspective.

Additionally, the seduction we see in the trailer doesn’t travel throughout the entire film. Guadagnino is known for his use of eroticism to build a narrative. In Challengers, that’s the primary focus here. In fact, the sexual tension that is never acted on is primarily between Art and Patrick.

The closeness between them and their comfort in touching each other is apparent. The small gap between their bodies is filled with a cavernous yearning that you can feel. This is their story, and how Art and Patrick relate to each other is the driving force behind Challengers. They both covet Tashi for different reasons. Patrick wants a peer, and Art wants someone to love and to make him better.

Challengers

Faist and O’Connor are fantastic in their roles. Their anger toward each other and frustration on the court and in passing as they age is palpable. But their chemistry is electric, kinetically bouncing between platonic and romantic. Faist as Art is melancholic at points. He’s the sad golden retriever waiting for praise. He wants to love and be loved, and he can’t do much outside of it. He’s defined by his relationship with Patrick first and then by his marriage.

On the other hand, O’Connor’s Patrick is erratic and confident. He knows he’s the best and that he doesn’t have to work at it. But that talent means that it’s easy to burn out to the point that he can’t even afford a hotel room. He’s a mess, but at the same time, he’s still competent. And somewhere, deep inside, he’s not playing to win Tashi. He’s playing to win Art.

While Zendaya’s presence as a force on the two men is important, she is eclipsed by their yearning, friendship, and closeness in a way that makes their bromance supersede everything else. Even in their anger and jealousy toward each other, Art and Patrick have a chemistry that doesn’t stop working. It’s what makes their physical match so captivating to watch. As Tashi says early on in the film, real tennis becomes a romance between the players, a moment when they both speak the same language and dance the same dance.

Challengers (2024)

Infinitely attractive and pathetic simultaneously, the way that Guadagnino frames Challengers as one long watch, set after set, prompted by title cards, is inspiring. While his usage of first-person camerawork is questionable in the film’s final sequence, the pacing and choice to align each act to the sets played sets Challengers apart. As Art and Patrick hit their bright yellow tennis ball back and forth, Zendaya watches, waiting for the romance and real tennis to erupt. When it does, we know the place she had in the story.

Outside of the title cards denoting the changes in the set, they are used throughout the film to denote flashbacks, which happen way too often. Because of the strength of costuming and styling the characters, the shifts in time are noticeable without telling us exactly when things happened.

Instead, the constant “three days earlier,” “eight years earlier” and the like disrupt the flow of Challengers and its visual strength too. That said, the cinematography matches the look and feel of the tennis match as the love triangle grows. At the same time, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score is stellar. The synth beats like a live heart through Challengers. It sets the period, the atmosphere, and, ultimately, the pacing.

Skillfully directed, fantastically paced, and expertly acted, Challengers only stumbles when you remember what you were sold a ticket for. However, once you’re over that hurdle, it’s a sumptuous take on romance and sport that leaves you wanting more when the credits roll.

Challengers is playing nationwide on April 26, 2024.

Is Challengers Really That Scandalous? | REVIEW

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is about Tennis through and through, but does the scandal match the hot and heavy trailer? Or does it just fizzle. Read our full review at butwhytho.net

Challengers (2024)
  • 8/10
    Rating - 8/10
8/10

TL;DR

Skillfully directed, fantastically paced, and expertly acted, Challengers only stumbles when you remember what you were sold a ticket for. However, once you’re over that hurdle, it’s a sumptuous take on romance and sport that leaves you wanting more when the credits roll.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
Previous ArticleINTERVIEW: Abubakar Salim Explores The Complexity And Vibrancy Of Grief
Next Article REVIEW: ‘A Condition Called Love’ Episode 2 — “My First Boyfriend”
Kate Sánchez
  • Website
  • X (Twitter)
  • Instagram

Kate Sánchez is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of But Why Tho? A Geek Community. There, she coordinates film, television, anime, and manga coverage. Kate is also a freelance journalist writing features on video games, anime, and film. Her focus as a critic is championing animation and international films and television series for inclusion in awards cycles. Find her on Bluesky @ohmymithrandir.bsky.social

Related Posts

The Long Walk (2025) film review promotional image
9.5

REVIEW: ‘The Long Walk’ Is The Most Heartfelt And Heartbreaking Stephen King Adaptation

09/11/2025
Natasha O’Keeffe in Whitetail
6.5

TIFF 2025: ‘Whitetail’ Is An Intimate View Of A Woman Stuck In Time

09/10/2025
Love Brooklyn
6.0

REVIEW: ‘Love, Brooklyn’ Rests on Pretty

09/10/2025
Park Jeong-min in The Ugly
7.0

TIFF 2025: ‘The Ugly’ Is A Harsh Exercise In Self-Reflection

09/09/2025
No Other Choice
9.0

TIFF 2025: ‘No Other Choice’ Delivers a Bleak Vision of Capitalism

09/09/2025
Molly Lewis in Whistle
8.0

TIFF 2025: ‘Whistle’ Is A Breath Of Fresh Air

09/07/2025

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here
TRENDING POSTS
The Long Walk (2025) film review promotional image
9.5
Film

REVIEW: ‘The Long Walk’ Is The Most Heartfelt And Heartbreaking Stephen King Adaptation

By Kate Sánchez09/11/2025Updated:09/11/2025

The Long Walk is a brutal watch. Equally heartfelt and heartbreaking, it’s one of the best adaptations of Stephen King’s work.

Black Women Anime — But Why Tho (9) BWT Recommends

10 Black Women in Anime That Made Me Feel Seen

By LaNeysha Campbell11/11/2023Updated:12/03/2024

Black women are some of anime’s most iconic characters, and that has a big impact on Black anime fans. Here are some of our favorites.

EA Sports FC Icons Match promotional image from Nexon News

2025 Icons Match Returns With Football Legends Bridging The Pitch And Video Games

By Kate Sánchez09/03/2025Updated:09/03/2025

NEXON has announced the return of the ‘2025 Icons Match,’ a live event that brings a full roster of legendary players to the pitch.

Gojo Jujutsu Kaisen - But Why Tho (2) Features

Everything To Know About Satoru Gojo

By Kate Sánchez09/07/2023Updated:02/16/2025

Satoru Gojo is the heart of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 — now, heading into Cour 2, here is everything you need to know about the character.

But Why Tho?
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest RSS YouTube Twitch
  • CONTACT US
  • ABOUT US
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
  • Review Score Guide
Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small contribution.
Written Content is Copyright © 2025 But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

But Why Tho Logo

Support Us!

We're able to keep making content thanks to readers like YOU!
Support independent media today with
Click Here