Match Point 2005
I had heard a lot of good things about this. Woody Allen could film paint drying and half the critics would rave about it, but even so I had my hopes up. My girlfriend asked what it was about and I said “tennis". Then I looked up the only description I could find which said it was about a former professional tennis player who gets involved with the daughter of a rich family and then has an affair with his girlfriend’s brother’s fiancee. This didn’t seem to be typical cute or funny Woody Allen material, and this movie is in fact not funny at all. It is a dark drama, along the lines of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which is directly referenced in case you miss the point.
That little description describes most of the movie, which then takes a big turn in the last 30 minutes, only to have a great twist at the very end which actually made the movie seem almost worth watching. But that first couple of hours is pretty mundane. We watch as the pretty-boy former tennis player is handed a career by the family of his girlfriend. I mean the guy goes from teaching tennis lessons to having a chauffeur in no time. He quickly finds himself obsessed with the fiancee, a struggling but extremely sexy american actress played by Scarlett Johansson, who essentially plays herself only without the struggling part.
I don’t want to give away too much. The rich family is quite British, the men surprisingly tan, and London seems to be in constant summertime. My problem with the movie is there is absolutely nothing to like about the tennis player and yet we’re forced to follow him around like we care about him. He is in a dilemma entirely of his own making so I don’t really care if he finds a good way out of it or not. This is probably what critics like about the movie, but is the reason I didn’t care for it. The acting by most everyone was pretty good with the exception of Johanson who is great when she is being pretty and flirtatious but has trouble with anything more substantial.
In the end I just didn’t care about the movie and felt like I was getting pulled down to this guy’s level just by watching. He never seems motivated by anything but selfishness and you can’t even take any satisfaction from him being delightfully evil because he isn’t really trying to be awful, just doing a horrible job of being good. It reminded me a lot of The Talented Mr. Ripley where the main character was in a similar downward spiral and just stumbled along without any apparent aim (featuring similarly Jude Law-ish actors). I gave that movie a C+, and this one deserves the same.