What’s so fun about ‘Challengers’?

The first time I saw “Challengers” was at the AMC in my hometown — not the fancy one in the surprisingly still bustling mall, but the seedy one behind Menard’s. It feels a bit like “The Stanley Parable” there, or the parts of a Mod Quad dorm that survived the remodeling. For such a large theater, it’s always ominously quiet; more often than not, the staff outnumber the patrons.

That night, I was with a group of three teenage girls watching “Challengers.” Normally, when you’re sitting in a theater this empty with a group of friends, you feel like you’ve got the golden ticket — you can talk through the movie without any shame. But they (and I) sat there reverently for the entire 131 minutes. It was that good.

I use this word too much, but “Challengers” is really a total work of artIt is a total work of art, where all the different media together strive for one goal: it is Wagnerian.

The cinematography is great, especially all the different ways of filming tennis that director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom comes up with (from the “Mario Tennis Aces” bird’s-eye view to the insane “POV: you’re the ball” and less successful “POV: you’re Mike Faist” sequences). Most people don’t watch tennis — it’s essentially a country club sport and objectively less exciting than college football, the NBA, Formula 1, etc. — but Mukdeeprom lets you see tennis the way a die-hard fan does.

The score is genius. One moment it’s driving techno. The next it’s a haunting piano string that sounds a bit like Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw.” Every now and then it throws in a hymn sung by a children’s choir, just to keep you on the edge of your seat. (Emerald Fennell tries something similar when she uses “Zadok the Priest” in the “Saltburn” soundtrack, because it seems like a very directorial thing to do that mimics what Kubrick does in “A Clockwork Orange” or what Anderson does in “Moonrise Kingdom,” but it doesn’t work. Unlike “Challengers,” “Saltburn” doesn’t earn its dramatic musical flourishes.)

The acting is superb, from the top to the bottom of the cast. Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig and Mike Faist’s Art Donaldson are insufferable, but insufferable with irresistible charm and great chemistry. Zendaya is at her best not when she’s pulling that “Look, there’s an internal conflict going on!” face that every director has had her do since “Euphoria,” but when she’s playing off O’Connor or Faist in flirtatious banter and heart-wrenching arguments. Director Luca Guadagnino is also brilliant at filling his worlds with a fun variety of character actors and colorful extras.

I liked “Challengers” so much that I saw it a second time. This past weekend, the Browning Cinema at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center offered five screenings — which, as far as I could tell, were fairly well attended despite the competing “Flick on the Field,” Texas A&M game, and off-campus discos that evening.

Upon a second viewing, however, I was shocked. I had completely missed something: “Challengers” is hilarious. When I saw it in the nearly empty, completely silent AMC, it read like a drama — a high drama, a masterpiece. When I saw it at the Browning and people started giggling, I was initially outraged. “The West has fallen!” I screamed in my head. “Americans have forgotten how to appreciate movies with sex scenes. They laugh like shy schoolgirls! Don’t they realize that the movie genius? Don’t they realize that the director Italian?”

But I gave it five minutes and realized they were right. “Challengers” is as much a sex comedy as it is a romantic drama. In a theater roaring with laughter, scenes I thought were transcendent became even better: funny.

There’s a lot of talk about how movies aren’t sexy anymore. There’s also a lot of reactionary work that claims to “bring sexy back” (“The Idol” and “Saltburn” come to mind). These projects are usually sexually explicit — sure — but hardly sensual. There’s nothing sexy about a movie with an agenda, so the problem remains.

Maybe the solution lies somewhere in movies like “Challengers,” movies that are sexy but not so self-absorbed that they leave no room for laughter. Maybe that’s why “Challengers” and, in the same vein, Jennifer Lawrence’s “No Hard Feelings” work. (I find the tongue-in-cheek, wink-nudge, nudge attitude that permeates everything sexual in Marvel movies unbearable, though.)

Ultimately, I was wrong about Guadagnino’s “Challengers.” It sounds much more like an Italian opera—say, Rossini’s “Le comte Ory,” a truly beautiful melodrama that also features a hilarious trio scene—than anything by Wagner.