THB #525: Challengers

Challengers is a bad movie. Maybe the worst movie from someone I consider a quality director in the last year or so.

It gives me enormous pause when people I respect really like the film… and they are out there. I can see some of the things that they find attractive about the film. But as I sat in that theater and watched it roll out, I really tried to find the better angels of the film. And I kept finding it offering up the rough sketches of interesting ideas, repeatedly turned into cartoons.

At the core of it, the key problem with Challengers is very simple. It doesn’t know what it is about.

It’s not a mystery movie. It’s not a riddle to solve. It’s 2 male best friends who both are sexually drawn to a girl they do not know when they all meet (cute). One guy is more aggressive and has, as the movie loves to tell us, an especially big penis. The other is more passive and his big move is not being an asshole. No one ever mentions his penis, so apparently, it is nothing special.