Released: 22nd January
Seen: 7th February
In the history of cinema, the genre of the sports movie has presented us with some truly great films that stand the test of time. From A League Of Their Own to Air Bud, all genres and levels of prestige have been the subject of a good sports movie. Almost every sport you can think of has had a film focused on it, including table tennis. Of course, up till now, most table tennis films haven’t exactly been the most well-known; perhaps the biggest one would be Forrest Gump, but that’s not so much a table tennis film as it is a film where someone played table tennis at some point. Honestly, the sport of table tennis hasn’t had its big, sweeping, dramatic epic until now, and Marty Supreme is undeniably the ultimate in table tennis cinema.
Marty Supreme focuses on Marty Mouser (Timothée Chalamet), a low-down, cheap little punk from the poor part of New York, where he works at his uncle’s shoe shop. At least, he works at his uncle’s shoe shop for now; he’s only taken the job so that he can earn enough money to buy the airfare needed to go to the British Open table tennis championship. Eventually, he gets the money through less-than-legal means and goes, losing in the finals to the Japanese entrant Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi). Even though he has lost, Marty makes a connection with Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), a pen salesman who wants to fund an exhibition match in Japan between Koto and Marty. Marty has some trouble accepting, but no trouble sleeping with Milton’s wife, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). The reason Marty has trouble accepting the offer is that Milton wants him to throw the match, and while Marty has to decide if that’s worth it he also has to deal with his friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) being pregnant with his kid, a potentially career ending set of fines, a lost dog, a redneck who wants to shoot his face off and his own inability to shut the fuck up for five minutes and not make every situation as bad as humanly possible.
The magic of Marty Supreme is how seamlessly it manages borderline farcical comedic elements with some truly intense drama, all while still being a film about table tennis. It’s a series of dark jokes played dead seriously, from an attempted robbery that’s so pointed and polite it becomes insane, to a plan to make money that ends up with a bathtub falling through a ceiling, all this movie needed was to be in high contrast and have a more zippy soundtrack and you could pass it off as a raunchy 80s comedy movie. Every scene just stacks the insanity on top of each other, getting more and more wild in ways that only make things funnier and simultaneously more intense. By the end of the film, you don’t know if you should be laughing or picking at the fabric on the armrest of the cinema seats. Considering this is by one of the filmmakers who brought us Uncut Gems, it isn’t a shock that it builds tension through discomfort so effectively but it still does it wonderfully, maybe not as well as Uncut Gems did it (That film was so tense you could shove a lump of coal up your ass and have a full diamond necklace by the end credits) but it’s still incredibly assembled.
For a film that’s two and a half hours long, it’s stunning how quickly everything seems to just fly by. There’s no real moment where you have the time to get bored or distracted because every single moment is so captivating and energetic. Even the table tennis matches are truly compelling, something I never thought I’d be able to say about table tennis. You aren’t watching a game, you’re watching a series of battles that use rackets and a little plastic ball as weapons, and every single match feels truly intense. You can see the desperation in every single motion the players make, and when Marty is one of those players, the games are something else. Again, we’re talking about a game most people play while drunk in the garage with a couple of mates who have a paddle in one hand and a half-drunk can of beer in the other, but in Marty Supreme it might as well be the goddamn Super Bowl. Indeed, this film would be much improved with a halftime show featuring Bad Bunny.
Speaking of random potential cast members, Marty Supreme might be one of the best cast films of the year, and I won’t be shocked if that inaugural Best Casting Oscar has this film’s name inscribed upon it. Everyone is just perfect, from Gwenyth Paltrow being effortlessly flawless as a former superstar to Penn Jillette’s cameo as a redneck willing to shoot anyone who trespasses on his property to Kevin O’Leary being an utter cunt… and also playing one in the movie (I don’t like the man, but he’s good in the film). Every single role is spectacularly cast, from the major supporting roles to the minor characters who get one line, it’s honestly a triumph that such a film could make such a large group of people fit together so effortlessly… but really, the film’s main casting triumph is the lead.
So, Timothée Chalamet is just going to brute force his way to getting an Oscar this year through sheer confidence alone and we just have to accept that. The last time I saw a performance by someone so sure that they were the coolest, sexiest, most badass motherfucker in the entire film was when I saw Brad Pitt in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood… and Brad Pitt looked like Brad Pitt, Timothée Chalamet looks like the love child of John Waters and a swamp rat but he has so much raw confidence in every single frame that you completely buy everything he’s selling. He will take over the world of table tennis, bed every beautiful woman within a 20-mile radius of his cock and be the best shoe salesman in the world, all while sporting the worst moustache that has ever been grown outside of Germany. Even when he’s being the smarmiest piece of shit you’ve ever seen, he makes it fascinating and enjoyable to watch from start to finish. It’s the kind of performance that deserves all the praise and then some more. Timothée Chalamet may have gotten some laughs on the press tour for being cocky about how he knows he deserves the Oscar this year, but he has every right to be cocky with what he’s presented here.
Marty Supreme is the kind of glorious epic piece of insanity that shouldn’t work; it’s a madcap adventure revolving around table tennis, which is a sport that probably shouldn’t be getting an insane epic dramedy… but it works, it just works. It’s full of relatable, weird and fascinating characters just trying to make it against all the odds, and it’s impossible not to root for the main character to get what he believes he deserves. Marty Supreme is sublime, absolutely insane fun from top to bottom.
Movie Meister Reviews 