(3.5 stars)
The first thing to know about “Marty Supreme” is that the ping-pong is phenomenal.
In early trailers, it was hard to tell whether this was a study of a table tennis champion or a spoof about a table tennis champion, i.e. another entry into the classic genre in which audiences are introduced to a niche hobby (“Best in Show” for dog breeding, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” for beauty pageants) only for the film to mock everyone who participates in it.
But “Marty Supreme” presents ping-pong as a riveting, nail-biting sport that fills stadiums in countries around the world. Unfortunately for would-be champion Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet, playing a fictionalized version of mid-century champ Marty Reisman), none of those countries is the United States. This fact goes a little way toward explaining the relentless hustle and desperation with which he attacks life; a 1950s New York shoe salesman plagued by the knowledge that he is one of the top athletes in the world, but in a sport everyone else thinks is just the silly game you play while waiting for a bowling lane to open up.
By the time the plot’s main action kicks off, Marty has just a few frenetic days to get himself to the world championships in Japan — a misadventure that involves shotguns, mafiosi, Broadway debuts, elaborate shady plots, plumbing mishaps and a big dog.
A different movie might have sentimentalized Marty’s journey, giving him a dying mother, an expectant wife or a neighborhood in dire straits — some stake in the game bigger than Marty himself. But his mother (a delightfully unrecognizable Fran Drescher) is a pest who feigns illnesses to get her son to return her calls. And though he does knock up his plucky childhood friend-with-benefits (Odessa A’Zion) in the movie’s first scene, Marty treats Rachel’s pregnancy as a barrier rather than a motivator.
“I have something to say and it’s not intended to be mean,” he tells her in one of his crueler moments. “I have a purpose. You don’t.”
The main thing driving Marty is an unshakable belief in his own greatness, and this is where the character gets interesting. If you claim to be the best in the world, but you really are the best in the world, is that monstrous ego or just truth-telling? If you have to swindle a few marks to prove what everyone else should have believed all along, is that forgivable? “Marty Supreme” almost fits into another popular film genre: Biopics Of Disagreeable Men, the geniuses (from Steve Jobs to Alan Turing to Mozart) who are revealed as not just singular talents, but also immense jackwagons. The fact that Marty’s singular talent isn’t building a decoder to win World War II but rather smacking a tiny ball with a tiny paddle across a tiny net is both absurd and relatable, beautiful and pathetic.
None of this would work were it not for the swaggering, high-wire performance of Chalamet. His trademark delicate beauty, worn so easily in films like “Little Women” and “Call Me By Your Name,” has been toned down by stained teeth and pockmarked skin. His manner is rodent-like, but he’s got charisma for days (“I could sell shoes to an amputee,” he says matter-of-factly). When he strips off his shirt to play, his arms flail like pipe cleaners, but he’s mesmerizing when he dives for the ball.
All around, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a better-cast film. Venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary (“Shark Tank”) makes his acting debut as a wealthy pen company CEO, proving that sometimes the best casting decision is hiring someone to essentially play themselves. Gwyneth Paltrow returns from a long screen absence to play Kay — a former movie star whom Marty identifies as a potential benefactor — with enough savviness to make you remember that long before Goop, this woman won an Oscar. Anyone can sell jade vagina eggs, after all, but not everyone can channel Old Hollywood with such command and ease.
After I had figured out what “Marty Supreme” is not — not a mockumentary, not (exactly) a genius biopic — it took me a while to place what it is. It’s a sports drama while Marty is competing, it’s a heist while Marty is scheming, it’s a sweaty action flick while Marty is hustling. It’s one or two shakes of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and it’s very often funny. Eventually I realized that in tone and pacing it most closely reminded me of “Uncut Gems,” and then I felt like a dummy for not getting there sooner: Josh Safdie, who directed and co-wrote “Marty” (with Ronald Bronstein), also co-directed and co-wrote the 2019 Adam Sandler movie about a jeweler racing to pay off a gambling debt.
“What did you think?” I asked my movie date at the end of the screening. “I feel exhausted,” he replied. “I feel like I just watched eight different movies at once,” I said in return.
Every scene was high-stakes, propelling this compelling, unlikable man one step closer or further from a destiny you were never quite sure he deserved. Every interaction felt as though it might end in sex or blood or death or humiliation — all the highs and lows of life, condensed into a potent 2½ hours; the highs and lows of a sport compressed onto a 9-by-5 wood composite table.
The ping-pong is sublime.
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