Marty Supreme review: Timothée Chalamet's ping-pong comedy is 'fresh, funny and exhilarating'

The star is "captivating", alongside an "impeccable" Gwyneth Paltrow, in this "madcap" film about a young man who scams and steals his way to becoming a table-tennis champion.

Quite apart from his on-screen characters, Timothée Chalamet is one of the most performative actors around, especially when promoting a film. For Marty Supreme, in which he plays an aspiring ping-pong champion in 1952, he has already acted as a self-important version of himself in a video spoof of a marketing meeting for the film, and appeared at a pop-up store selling Marty Supreme merch accompanied by men with giant orange ping-pong balls covering their heads. These real-life Timmy scenarios can be amusingly meta or annoying, and with a lesser actor might bleed into the film. But Chalamet's performance as Marty Mauser is so engaging that you can put his off-screen antics aside. And while last year his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown was better than the film itself, Marty Supreme is as fresh, funny and exhilarating to watch as its hero. It's worth being bombarded by merch and giant orange heads.

The film is full of unexpected turns. It appears to be a sports film, but is actually about what a screw-up Marty is. He works in his uncle's shoe shop on the Lower East Side of New York, but will let nothing stand in his way as he strives to compete in international table tennis. He scams, lies and steals from everyone, including those closest to him, to get to ping-pong tournaments. And he is not some clichéd loveable scamp, but an arrogant, entitled guy. He's not movie-star glamorous, but a scrawny young man with a pencil moustache and blotchy skin. Most surprising of all, Chalamet's on-screen charm, the character's bravado and the film's wit are captivating even when Marty's behaviour is at its worst.

The director, Josh Safdie, also wrote the screenplay with his longtime collaborator Ronald Bronstein, loosely basing it on the story of a real-life table tennis champion, Marty Reisman. Safdie is best known for gritty films like Uncut Gems (2019), directed with his brother, Benny, and if Uncut Gems were a madcap comedy instead of a drama about sleazy characters, it might be Marty Supreme. They share a kinetic energy and textured world. Here Safdie immerses us in Marty's working-class street of small storefronts, tenement buildings with apartments that need painting, and neighbours who know each others' business.

Marty is from that world, but his ambition sets him apart. When he says, "I'm not drinking caffeine," that's a wise choice for someone who is already hyper, who moves and talks superfast. In the back room of the shoe store he has quick sex with his friend Rachel, who happens to be married to someone else. Odessa A'zion is vivid and amusing in the role, especially when Rachel turns out to be as much of a schemer as Marty, his perfect match.

Soon after that encounter, Marty points a gun at a co-worker who is closing his uncle's safe – a scene played for laughs because even the victim knows he is a con man, not a killer – and takes some money he insists is owed him. He runs off to a tournament in the UK and talks his way into a five-star hotel, where Kay Stone, a former film star impeccably played by Gwyneth Paltrow, swans by with the look and elegance of Grace Kelly. Marty cold-calls her to meet. With a glint in her eye, Paltrow lets us see that Kay isn't duped, but she is intrigued.

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It says a lot about Safdie's gift for working with actors that some unusual casting choices fit in seamlessly with Chalamet and Paltrow. Kevin O'Leary, the financial guru known for the reality TV show Shark Tank, plays Kay's mean-spirited tycoon husband. Tyler Okonma, better known as the musician and rapper Tyler, the Creator, is energetic as Wally, Marty's partner in hustling ping-pong games. The director Abel Ferrara plays a thug.

There is ping-pong here, of course. Chalamet reportedly spent years practising, and leaps around in a display of athleticism. Marty's toughest opponent is a Japanese champion named Endo, an especially notable opponent in the post-World War Two years. But those scenes never lose sight of character. Always a showman, when Marty wins a point, he whoops. When he loses one, he punches a wall.

The film eventually becomes as frantic and hyper as Marty, deliberately piling up outrageous twists, including gunshots and a ceiling that collapses. It almost all works. One flaw in this two-and-a-half hour film is that it runs two-and-a-half hours. Some sequences are entertaining in themselves – including a long montage of Marty's travels around the world doing stunts like playing ping-pong against a trained seal – but seem like indulgent detours.

And at the end, unaccountably, the film descends into the creakiest of sports-movie clichés, with not one but two big matches in which trite glances at a changing scoreboard and audience reactions tell us who's winning. A pat, sentimental ending follows that. A film this bracing and original deserves something much more inventive. But Marty Supreme has such scope, ambition and humour that its flaws, as with those off-screen Timmy exploits, are easy to overlook.

Marty Supreme is released on 25 December in the US and 26 December in the UK

★★★★☆

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