Offscreen Central is horrified by the fires devastating Southern California. As much of our team is based in LA, it is hard for us to go on business as usual. If you are in any of the impacted areas, please stay and stay up to date with precautions needed in your area. The Watch Duty app is a great resource for mapping evacuation updates and orders. The DSA have put together an emergency resource guide for those in the Los Angeles county. The guide includes where to track evacuation warnings, nearby shelter locations and essentials for survival kits.

While we will be dropping work again after a short break, we are hoping to highlight someone in need with each piece dropped. Kevork Douzadjian lost everything due to the Eaton Fire. If you can make a small donation, here is their GoFundMe.

Challengers took over 2024 in a way nobody was expecting. It was a box office hit, instantly integrating itself into the culture. Films that release in the first half of the year have a more difficult time going the distance through award season, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve it. There are so many wonderful things about Challengers, but the film wouldn’t fully work without the brilliant screenplay by Justin Kuritzkes, which happens to be his first official screenplay.

All the main characters are unique and work perfectly in tandem with each other. Also, they all feel like real people. Tashi is confident, competitive, and ambitious. Tennis is her first and truest love. It is rare for a woman in film to have unlikable tendencies without being criticized to death online. Somehow, the combination of Kuritzkes’s screenplay and Zendaya’s performance created a character beloved by all. For a man to write a character so self-assured and not make her a villain shows a maturity most veteran screenwriters do not have. 

Patrick and Art are great characters, too, although they are opposite in many ways. Patrick is cocky. He is the rebellious son of wealthy parents who would prefer to rely on his natural talent in tennis rather than get a real job. On the other hand, Art has had to work hard to accomplish all he has achieved. He’s a puppy dog compared to Patrick and Tashi’s outwardly brash attitudes, although he is no marshmallow. He’s not afraid to sow doubt where he senses weakness. Kuritzkes created these polar opposite characters but still made their friendship with each other believable. Without their chemistry, the final scene of Challengers wouldn’t hit as hard.

The non-linear timeline could be considered a risky move, but it’s easy to follow between the strength of the screenplay and the excellent editing. Who is “winning” in the Challenger final lines up with who is “winning” in the story. Sport is an ideal metaphor for relationships. Tennis, in particular, is a good choice because of the organization of the point system. It is a Russian nesting doll of wins and losses. There are points, games, and sets. You don’t need to win every point to win a game and you don’t have to win every set to win the match. It can be a genuine back-and-forth battle, which is the type of relationship we see depicted in the film between Tashi, Patrick, and Art. Also, Kuritzkes makes the brilliant decision not to declare which man won the tennis match or give an answer to who “won” Tashi. It’s not about that, and it would leave half the audience unhappy. It’s about the bond they all share being healed by communicating silently through playing a damn good game of tennis.

Challengers is the epitome of what it means to be an original screenplay. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the feeling of being in a crowded room with someone you share an intimate history with and being forced to sit in it, unable to externalize it. Tashi, Patrick, and Art share a secret world in the Challenger final, and we are lucky enough to get a peek into it. Many writers go their entire careers without a screenplay as sharp as Challengers, and Kuritzkes nailed it immediately. It is erotic and full of desire without being exploitative. Our modern society has drifted conservative when it comes to sexuality onscreen. Challengers pushes back against this terrible regression, which is an important reason to champion a film like this one. We cannot slide back into being a shameful society. Justin Kuritzkes’s screenplay for Challengers deserves an Oscar nomination not only for its entertaining premise and compelling characters but also for its fearlessness against moralistic culture. 

Challengers is currently available on demand and streaming on Amazon Prime.
You can find our review of the film here.