This film follows Marty (Timothée Chalamet) as he hustles his way through the world of table tennis in the 1950s. By hustles I don’t mean that he works hard as an athlete and earns his money with an actual job to afford the travel required. By hustles I mean he lies, cheats, steals, manipulates, and on occasion gets rather violent, both verbally and physically, to get what he wants. His character is abrasive. Unlikable. Selfish. Irritatingly stubborn. And he constantly puts the people around him in mortal danger, including his pregnant girlfriend who is married to another man.
Was the real life story this was based on so boring they had to make it into an unwatchable The Queen’s Gambit? Was the world of table tennis so cutthroat to warrant this guy being a complete asshole? He does deplorable things and says things you should never say and there are zero repercussions. People around him die and he doesn’t care. His pregnant girlfriend gets shot and he leaves her at the hospital to go to Japan for a fake match. He owes money to every person in his life. And in the end, he just gets away with it all? Like, he won and went home to his newborn baby and all is well, YAY!
No, Timothée. I’m not yaying at the end of this one.
Maybe I’m Timothée Chalameted out. Maybe I heard so many good things about this film that my expectations were too high. Maybe I didn’t listen to my instincts after I watched the trailer and thought, “meh”, because I’ll likely never want to watch this again. What was up with the trailer concentrating on the orange ping pong balls when that plot point went nowhere? Honestly, I had a hard time staying until the end, not because its needlessly long, but because I couldn’t stand the main character. I think what bothers me the most is that Chalamet seems to be great when playing unlikable people – looking at you A Complete Unknown. At least that film was great. This one, not so much. I’d like to see him play someone I can actually like.
There were bright spots, though. Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion are so very good in this. They were the reason I made it through. While neither of their characters were perfect, at least I could find some empathy for their characters. For all the talk about Chalamet, I feel like these two women haven’t been talked about nearly as much as they should be. They are the high points because not a single one of the male characters is worth tuning in for.
2.5 out of 5 stars. 1.25 for Gwyneth and 1.25 for Odessa.
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
This film follows Marty (Timothée Chalamet) as he hustles his way through the world of table tennis in the 1950s. By hustles I don’t mean that he works hard as an athlete and earns his money with an actual job to afford the travel required. By hustles I mean he lies, cheats, steals, manipulates, and on occasion gets rather violent, both verbally and physically, to get what he wants. His character is abrasive. Unlikable. Selfish. Irritatingly stubborn. And he constantly puts the people around him in mortal danger, including his pregnant girlfriend who is married to another man.
Was the real life story this was based on so boring they had to make it into an unwatchable The Queen’s Gambit? Was the world of table tennis so cutthroat to warrant this guy being a complete asshole? He does deplorable things and says things you should never say and there are zero repercussions. People around him die and he doesn’t care. His pregnant girlfriend gets shot and he leaves her at the hospital to go to Japan for a fake match. He owes money to every person in his life. And in the end, he just gets away with it all? Like, he won and went home to his newborn baby and all is well, YAY!
No, Timothée. I’m not yaying at the end of this one.
Maybe I’m Timothée Chalameted out. Maybe I heard so many good things about this film that my expectations were too high. Maybe I didn’t listen to my instincts after I watched the trailer and thought, “meh”, because I’ll likely never want to watch this again. What was up with the trailer concentrating on the orange ping pong balls when that plot point went nowhere? Honestly, I had a hard time staying until the end, not because its needlessly long, but because I couldn’t stand the main character. I think what bothers me the most is that Chalamet seems to be great when playing unlikable people – looking at you A Complete Unknown. At least that film was great. This one, not so much. I’d like to see him play someone I can actually like.
There were bright spots, though. Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion are so very good in this. They were the reason I made it through. While neither of their characters were perfect, at least I could find some empathy for their characters. For all the talk about Chalamet, I feel like these two women haven’t been talked about nearly as much as they should be. They are the high points because not a single one of the male characters is worth tuning in for.
2.5 out of 5 stars. 1.25 for Gwyneth and 1.25 for Odessa.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
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