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esteeb.art · @esteeb.art@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Challengers 7/10

<strong>Official Hater Club Movie Challenge #2: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross<strong> I liked this? I think I did. I just don't know that I liked this for a lot of the reasons I've been hearing online, and definitely not nearly as much as others have. The camera work was undoubtedly amazing, and the visuals were dynamic and modern and fun. I liked the way the movie was structured, where once you kinda caught on to the fact that events would be name dropped and then shown out of order it made things a lot more fun than I think they would have been otherwise. This is an ice cold take but the two male leads in this are great together, their chemistry is perfect for the sort of rival, brother, lover thing that the movie is playing with here. Honestly, this movie was a sports anime but a live action film. IYKYK. I guess I could say that where the movie fell short was more a matter of expectations. Both from audience buzz and, to be fair, by the movie itself. It sets itself up to be this lurid erotic sports thriller. But I'm not going to lie, that part doesn't even really materialize for me. There's a lot of yearning in this film, a lot of power dynamics at play, a lot of posturing towards sexiness. But it never <i>feels<i> sexy. I'll cop to not being able to put my finger on exactly why it doesn't, but it just...doesn't. Like Zendaya is an objectively beautiful woman and carries herself with a sort of disinterested domme energy in this film that should have the degenerate in me hooting and hollering like a cartoon wolf. But she's just <i>so<i> frigid and <i>so<i>...I dunno...over these guys for being attracted to her it's as if she forgot to have fun manipulating them. Like it's hard to go, "Go off, Queen! Make these guys squirm." When she makes it look like homework you know? There's just this sense of a lack of payoff. It's all tease and frustration and self loathing. No reveling in the fantasy or the naughtiness of it, no release, no fun. It's almost typifying of that "every is hot but no one is fucking" problem that every movie has now. And I know what you're thinking, "Well the point, though, is that it's about the tennis." But is it? Because no one seems to be enjoying that all that much either. Even when the movie is showing us that this is supposed to be all these people care about it just kind of postures at it. Though, I will admit, it's better at conveying this than the interpersonal relationships. I'm just saying if you wanted to see the sort of push and pull between the sort of "sports is life, life is sports" metaphor there are better ways to get that fix (I'm talking about sports anime again). Oh, I was a little underwhelmed with the score too...since that is the prompt here. I didn't hate it but I dunno I it didn't wow me. I'm willing to chalk that, and really everything I've written here, up to taste and maybe I'm getting old. Either way don't get me wrong I had a good time, just not as good of a time as I was led to believe.

#haterclub #haterclub2025 #movie

Published 2025-01-30 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere