Tennis! 3-Ways! Zendaya’s butt!
BQB here with a review of…um…checks notes…a polyamorous tennis movie.
Has there ever been a really, really good tennis movie? Like a really memorable one? I had to google it and OK, Battle of the Sexes came to mind, but only after the google. I believe that years from now, this might go down as perhaps the first memorable tennis movie, because while you come (no pun intended) for the 3-way, you stay for the tennis.
“Do we really stay for the tennis, BQB?”
Yes. Somehow they found a way to make tennis that intriguing, and it’s not ALL about the 3-way. OK it’s mostly about the three way but at any rate, I never thought a movie about tennis could keep me on the edge of my seat.
The plot? In non linear fashion, the story jumps back and forth over the course of 20 years, telling the story of tennis pro power couple Artie and Tashi Donaldson (Mike Faist and Zendaya) and their once friend and lover, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor.)
Zweig and Artie are childhood friends and longtime tennis buddies when they meet Tashi at a regional tournament in high school in the 2000s. The trio hit it off so well that the become inseparable and by that I mean, you can’t separate them when they’re between the sheets. 1 chick and 2…well, you get the drift. Zendaya gets spit-roasted! OK she actually doesn’t on film but you can imagine that her character probably did, early and often.
“BQB, what is it mean to get spit-roasted?”
OK, 3.5 readers, you know how when you go to the grocery store and they have those rotisserie chickens warming on those 2 metal poles that turn them round and round so they stay nice and warm under the heat lamp? Never you mind.
Time passes. By the start of the film which, in Tarantino fashion, is the ending, Artie and Tashi are an old, middle-aged pro couple. Artie is a world famous player. Tashi is famous in her own right, though her career was short lived due to an injury. However, she manages her husband’s career and managed him to the tippy top of tennis stardom.
But alas, as of late, Artie is on a losing streak, so Tashi has a suggestion. Take on a sure thing to boost his confidence. A petty ante, seemingly low stakes regional game. A slump buster, if you will. It’s kinda like how some dudes will, after striking out with hot chicks for awhile, will go ahead and boink an ugly chick just to boost their confidence so they come across as more desirable to the hot chicks for having some stank on their hang low.
What? Yes, I swear this is a tennis movie.
Meanwhile, by sure coincidence, Zweig, the Donaldsons’ former menage-a-trois partner and beloved friend now turned enemy due to reasons I won’t get into for SPOILER purposes, ends up being that slump buster, having qualified to compete in said slump busting match.
Zweig is getting older. He’s poor and living in his car. He’s swirling the bottom of the drain of the tennis circuit. He can barely make ends meet. He resents the Donaldsons, for it could have just had easily been him earning the big cash if Artie hadn’t snatched Tashi away, so now he’s hungry and angry and mean and RAARGH does he ever want payback.
What does this all boil down to? It’s the ultimate fight against cuckery. Tennis is Tashi’s life. Managing and being married to a winner is all she had to dull the pain of losing out on her own career. If Artie loses to a man she once danced the horizontal mambo with, he will forever be an uber cuck in Tashi’s eyes and their marriage and idyllic life will be over.
Yet if Patrick loses, he’ll be a homeless bum on the streets forever, so everyone has a lot riding on this and really, you want everyone to win and no one to lose.
Oddly, it’s clear the writers/producers/director knew a lot about tennis, for the story is quite detailed about the sport, to the point where I wondered if this was actually a true story and did I just miss a story in the news about three tennis players having a three way? Turns out it is indeed fictional though screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes in interviews has said he based the story on a tense Williams sisters match (the match seemed so cinematic that his creative juices began flowing.) (See Glamour magazine for more info but I’m too lazy to link to it.)
The real star of this film? Zendaya’s butt. Damn. I always thought she was quite skinny but that thing defies all laws physics. No, you don’t get to see it in all its glory, but just enough through the panties and for considerable time. Her butt should get its own independent credit in the film because it is enough reason to see it on the big screen. Truly breath taking, really.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Does it sound ridiculous? Yes, but as the film flashed backward, it strung me along, making me wonder how a once friendly three-way broke up into 2 thirds of the three way despising the other third and as it flashed forward, I needed to know who was going to win this battle royale, this fight to not be a cuck in Zendaya’s eyes.
SIDENOTE: Men, I realized way too late in life that if you’re ever in a position where you feel you need to fight to keep your woman from not thinking of you as a cuck, then you’re already a cuck and need to dump her and find another woman who won’t cuck you. Stand strong against cuckery.
DOUBLE SIDENOTE: All props to Zendaya’s keister aside, this movie really allowed her to flex her acting chops. Prior to this, I saw her as a frivolous starlet but she really comes into her own in this picture. (Pun not intended.)
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