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WIMBLEDON by Tom McCurrie
If there's such a thing as comfort food, there's such a thing as comfort cinema. Like corn on the cob and biscuits n' gravy, comfort cinema makes you feel good inside. And WIMBLEDON is comfort cinema with a vengeance.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Not that WIMBLEDON will sweep the Oscars or anything like that. It's essentially ROCKY on the tennis court, as an over-the-hill, 119th in-the-world ranked player (Paul Bettany) takes one last shot at winning Wimbledon before he retires. This is about as predictable and formulaic as it gets. Like all Rocky wannabes, Bettany is obviously going to win the championship as sure as the sun's coming up the next morning. Because you can see this climax coming like a brass band down the middle of Main Street, any suspense -- and audience interest -- should theoretically evaporate.
But they don't, for several reasons. First is Richard Loncraine's playful direction. From the opening credits which mimic the to-and-fro of a tennis match to POV shots that give us a ball's eye view of the game, Loncraine juices the movie with a burst of stylistic energy that's nothing short of infectious. The high-speed zooms and slo-mo shots also make the sport of tennis, with its visually monotonous back-and-forth play, much more pictorially appealing.
Then there's the knockout cast. Paul Bettany channels Hugh Grant in a boyish, self-deprecating performance that makes his underdog character especially endearing, while Kirsten Dunst is a bewitching force of nature as his love interest. Minor roles are expertly limned as well, with Bernard Hill and Eleanor Bron scoring as Bettany's bickering parents. Actors like these go a long way towards helping the audience forget about the formula underpinnings.
The script, written by Adam Brooks, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, is able to freshen its predictable plot as well. Most ROCKY-inspired movies show our underdog hero train like a madman to defeat his opponent. But in WIMBLEDON, Bettany's problem isn't a matter of training. He has the ability to win, but not the fire. But one night with Dunst, who's also competing at Wimbledon, gives him the fire to win his first match. And the more nights he spends with Dunst, the more he wins. Thus Bettany gets to the finals at Wimbledon not through the locker room, but through the bedroom! This is about as unusual a "training" regimen as you'll see in tennis, and helps make WIMBLEDON more novel, and more wonderfully comic, than its Underdog-Wins-The-Big-Game storyline might suggest. The fact that Dunst plays worse the more she sees Bettany is a nice touch, not only providing a neat twist to the narrative, but also creating some hefty conflict between the couple. As always, the more conflict, the more the audience stays around to see how it resolves. WIMBLEDON also binds the romance and tennis plots together (Bettany needs Dunst's love to win), so that the romance doesn't feel tacked on and irrelevant to the ROCKY storyline. Finally, the championship match between Bettany and a snotty American has enough surprises (there's a bad call against Bettany that would make Serena Williams cringe) that we begin to doubt if our hero is destined to win after all.
The script does have its flaws, however. Besides its basic predictability, there's the problem with Bettany's backstory. Bettany's downward spiral in the tennis world began when he choked in a previous competition. What caused this self-doubt? His parents' bickering? A previous girlfriend betraying him? Does he hate playing tennis? None of this is made clear, and since we don't really know why Bettany behaves the way he does (or why Dunst invigorates him), it undercuts his character's otherwise strong emotional appeal.
Nevertheless, if you're looking for something that makes you feel good about life and love, and doesn't put on those nasty pounds either, WIMBLEDON is the comfort movie for you.
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
(Note: For all those who missed my past reviews, they're archived on Hollywoodlitsales.com. Just click the link on the main page and it'll take you to the Inner Sanctum. Love them or Hate them at your leisure!)
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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