Marty Supreme
Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is far from content being a twenty-three year-old shoe salesman in his Uncle Murray's (Larry 'Ratso' Sloman) cramped Lower East Side store. It is 1952 and table tennis is filling arenas in Europe and Japan and Marty sees an opportunity nobody else does for him to grab a brass ring, including developing orange ping pong balls his business partner Dion (Luke Manley) dubs the "Marty Supreme."
Laura's Review: B+
Cowriter/coeditor (with "Uncut Gems'" Ronald Bronstein)/director Josh Safdie ("Good Times"), a ping pong enthusiast, was fascinated by his uncle's tales of the NYC misfits who played back in the 1950s, so when his wife found an old book about Lawrence’s Table Tennis Club written by Marty Reisman, he had the inspiration for his next film. It's been interesting to see the work produced by the Safdie brothers separately and it is evident that it is Josh who supplies the hyperactive energy as he steps on the gas and never lets up as we follow his fast talking hustler scrounging for sponsorship and creating chaos.
We learn a lot about Marty in the film's first few minutes. Childhood friend, now married Rachel Mizler (Odessa A'zion, HBO's 'I Love LA'), arrives at the store under false pretenses so the two can have sex in the stockroom, leading into opening credits which feature hard charging sperm fertilizing an egg which turns into a ping pong ball, a microcosm of the entire film. Marty isn't above threatening his coworker with a gun to access the money in his uncle's safe he claims is owed to him and when asked by reporters about a big upcoming competition states about his major opponent, a friend no less, 'I'm going to do to Kletzki what Auschwitz couldn't, I'm going to finish the job' responding to their shock with 'I'm Jewish. I can say that.' Marty's also not exactly kind to his mother (Fran Drescher). What Marty is is driven and he doesn't care who he drives over.
He also happens to be a pretty amazing ping pong player, as we witness him returning ever widening shots with a backhand and under his leg as he competes in the London open (Chalamet does his own playing in the film, having trained extensively for years for the role). He does manage to beat his buddy Kletzki, but he makes an enemy of game official Mr. Sethi (travel writer Pico Iyer) with his arrogant demands to be housed in the Ritz along with game officials, an entitlement granted and abused. Former Hollywood star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who Marty hustled in her hotel the day before, even shows up to watch him play, later arriving at his hotel room in a mink coat with nothing but lacy lingerie underneath. Both she and her husband, pen magnate Milton Rockwell (Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary), will be financial targets, one more willing than the other, but Marty does pique Rockwell's interest by pointing out that his final opponent, Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, real-life winner of the Japanese National Deaf Table Tennis Championships), uses an unusal paddle, calling it the 'pen handler.' Endo will win the London open in a rout, making him a national hero post WWII and setting up Marty's ultimate opportunity-turned-personal-vendetta.
But before Marty gets to Japan on Rockwell's coattails, he'll lower his standards doing pool tricks during Harlem Globetrotter halftimes, an amusing montage featuring him playing with multiple balls and against a seal. He's also got a pregnant, married girlfriend and a $1,500 fine from the International Table Tennis Federation to deal with. It will end up costing his best friend Wally (Tyler 'the Creator' Okonma) his taxi, a low rent hotelier major renovation costs, Rachel's husband Ira (Emory Cohen, "Brooklyn") serious injury, and several people their lives. He'll also involve Rachel in a cockamamie ransom swindle over a dog, Moses, he was entrusted to care for by its owner Ezra Mishkin (director Abel Ferrara), an endeavor that will leave her with a bullet wound in addition to going into labor just as Marty jets off.
Timothée Chalamet has stated ambitions to join the pantheon of the greatest actors of all time and with his depiction of Bob Dylan last year and now this, one can see him making progress towards that goal. In addition to spending years learning to play ping pong in impressively elevated style, Chalamet delivers his dialogue in the rat-a-tat style of 1930's screwball comedies and somehow manages to keep us rooting for him despite some awful behavior. Perhaps it is the way he cringes at his own conduct when he even he recognizes he's gone too far, a physical tic usually accompanied by 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' Odessa A'zion is the standout of the huge ensemble supporting him, her Rachel standing by her man no matter what. Paltrow brings a sad weariness to Kay, a woman who has compromised for comfort willing to demean herself for the excitement Marty brings into her life. Of the unconventional casting here, Sloman fares better than the guy from Shark Tank, who, oddly, suffers in audience scene cutaways. Also watch out for basketball legend George 'The Ice Man' Gervin as Ping Pong parlor owner Herwald Lawrence; an unrecognizable Penn Jillette as Hoff, a guy involved in Moses' abduction; fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi as Kay's publicist Merle and real life 'Man on Wire' Philippe Petit as a Brussels MC.
Safdie's achieved an old world look with outstanding work by production designer Jack Fisk, who put tremendous effort into research, and cinematographer Darius Khondji ("Uncut Gems"), who shot on 35mm film using Arriflex cameras and vintage anamorphic lenses. Composer Daniel Lopatin's ("Uncut Gems") score leaned into the sound of bouncing ping pong balls, his faster sequences sounding like an Irish jig that fails to complete its sentences. That is accompanied by an anachronistic soundtrack featuring tracks like Peter Gabriel's 'I Have the Touch' and Tears for Fears' 'Everybody Wants to Save the World.'
And yet, for all its crazed invention, "Marty Supreme" doesn't measure up to "Uncut Gems," the last film worked on by both Safdie brothers (Benny also went solo this year with "The Smashing Machine). There are the little things, like the inexplicable rift between Marty and his mom, played by the underutilized Drescher in a low key. But it is Marty's arc that feels unbalanced, the man's dream achievement failing to bring him his expected riches yet his happiness finally secured in a final scene which just isn't earned. "Marty Supreme" is a lot of fun, but the devastation left in his wake is troubling.
Robin's Review: B+
A24 releases "Marty Supreme" in theaters on 12/25/25.
