[Warning: this article contains spoilers, viewer discretion is advised]
Marty Supreme is a comedic and action-packed movie based on the life of the professional table tennis player Marty Reisman. Reisman was a professional ping pong player from the late 1940s to the 1960s.
Reisman grew up in Manhattan, which is one reason why fellow New Yorker Timothee Chalamet thrived in this role.
The movie starts strongly with a beautiful scene of many sperm racing to fertilize an egg, which transitions into a ping pong ball—truly a masterpiece, and the perfect way to start the movie. By the end of the film, this image returns full circle.
Coming to this movie I expected a calm, passionate movie about a ping pong star. I got the passionate part, but the ping pong part…I did not. This movie took many turns.
When I saw all the trailers showing clips of ping pong, my brain narrowed and I expected what had been advertised (the orange ball), which is not the case.
That being said, if you’re into extremely questionable romance, this movie just might be for you.
Chalamet played the role of a rebel son and an adolescent man perfectly. I couldn’t tell what was acting and when he was just being a dude from Manhattan.
Speaking of twists and turns, very quickly in the movie the directors sort of decided “Yeah, let’s just drop a naked man in his bathtub onto a dog and an old man.”
For whatever reason, the man decided to send Chalamet with a ton of money to the vet with his dog—since leaving your animal with a stranger is a great idea.
Thankfully, Marty, being the problem-solver he is, took his friend and the dog to the ping pong tables to wager for money first. This way he could save the man money when he got back.
Unfortunately for Marty, he was too good at ping pong, upsetting a few people, who ended up chasing him. This ended up essentially blowing up the dog, which fell out of the car while they were driving away.
Kevin O’Leary also seemed to enjoy the role of slapping Chalamet’s cheeks with a paddle. I think the best part of the filming is that the fake paddle broke, so Chalamet was getting spanked with a real paddle.
Chalamet also refused a butt double. O’Leary stated that Chalamet said, “he’ll do it himself. He didn’t want some other a** immortalized.”
The ending of the movie wasn’t much better. Marty freaked out in Japan about how the game was rigged. He then proceeded to challenge Endo, the world champion. He barely beat Endo and ultimately accomplished basically nothing because the game didn’t mean anything.
The ending was also terrible: Marty came back, realised he had a kid and needed to be a father, and the movie just…ends.
This movie was more than just ping pong. It’s a movie about how pursuing your own goals is important, but how being blind to the people around you can hurt them and yourself.
The advertisement told the audience that this movie is about a man trying to make his dream come true and the passion behind that dream. The movie told us how pursuing your dream is important, but you need to realize how badly you’ve treated the people around you.
With this in mind, both executions are beautiful and were executed perfectly. I give this movie a 9/10 and would recommend it to anyone interested in watching this movie.
