Challengers is a sexy sexy drama about a trio of tennis player over a decade. As a guy who is forever perplexed by the rules of tennis, I can say that the film is about as much about tennis as it is professional gopher farming. You don’t need to know the game as the film is really about the relationship dramas of the three leader characters.

Specifically, it follows two guy pals who run into a superhot up-and-comer tennis phenom played by Zendaya. The film cuts back and forth from a match between the two guys in the present and their relationship with her over the years. It’s often acerbic, sexy, dangerous, and dramatic.

It’s also not as much about Zendaya as I expected. She’s always involved but the majority of the drama is more focused on the two guys. I was a little disappointed she didn’t have more agency in the script… which isn’t to say she isn’t the key to the threesome. She is… but we get more of the story from the guy POV.

I was very engrossed in this drama for at least an hour and change. It eventually started to get a little repetitive and drawn out for me since the film is exclusively about these three people and I don’t think their dramatic storylines were strong enough for 2+ hours.

That said, the dramatic finale chucked aside that complaint and was super solid and unpredictable. It plays out as part of a match (set? game? argh?!) and focuses heavily on unspoken drama and glances (and a LOT of sweat… like.,.. ALL the sweat). I wasn’t sure how it was gonna end and reading the expressions was a ton of chewable fun. Too bad my eternal confusion over how friggin’ tennis is scored kept getting in the way.

This is Luca Guadagnino’s most accessible film from the few films I’ve seen. It’s not languorous and slow like Call Me By Your Name, doesn’t feature fine young cannibals, or a horror freakout in an Italian dance studio. It’s approchable, sexy, dramatic and propulsive. In fact, the soundtrack is so propulsive you already know it was created by Trent Reznor even if you didn’t know it was created by Trent Reznor (his name in the end credits was the biggest “of course!” this year in film.

I’m a little disappointed in the flick even with a solid four stars. I was thinking I would go higher… and then briefly lower… before settling on its final rating. It’s dramatic and sexy and interesting for most of its runtime… but eventually gets mired in its own dramatic repetition. Still, a good watch. Highly recommended.

Score: 87