150 min | R | December 19, 2025 | A24
Timothee Chalamet commits fully to a ping pong obsessive, but the pacing and tonal whiplash keep this from greatness. Strong supporting turns from Kevin O’Leary, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Odessa A’zion can’t quite save the slapstick detours.
The supporting cast surprised me. Kevin O’Leary as the millionaire ink magnate brings unexpected weight. Gwyneth Paltrow does good work as the glamorous older actress. Odessa A’zion holds her own. And Chalamet is fully locked in, doing all his own table tennis work with visible intensity.
But Josh Safdie can’t seem to decide what movie he’s making. The pacing lurches. The slapstick feels sometimes intentional, sometimes not. There are stretches where Marty’s obsessive focus reads as zany rather than driven. Other moments land as genuinely compelling character study. The tonal shifts never settle into a rhythm.
The mobster subplot feels grafted on. The insistence on table tennis as a snobby European import not yet embraced by Americans struck me as ahistorical, though I’ll admit I know nothing about competitive ping pong in the 1950s. Maybe that’s all accurate. It still felt like world-building that didn’t earn its screen time.
Several missed opportunities here. The raw material of a guy stealing seven hundred bucks and fleeing to London for world championships is inherently interesting. Chalamet has the chops. The period detail looks gorgeous. But the movie keeps getting in its own way, undercutting drama with gags and rushing past moments that deserved to breathe.
Worth seeing for Chalamet and the performances around him. Just don’t expect it to cohere.