Wimbledon Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)September 16th, 2004
WIMBLEDON
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
WIMBLEDON is a light-weight but likable romantic sports comedy starring A BEAUTIFUL MIND's Paul Bettany and SPIDER-MAN's Kirsten Dunst, whose characters meet and fall in love while competing at the famous Wimbledon tennis
tournament.
Currently ranked 119th in the world, Peter Colt (Bettany) is a British player with a long history of choking. An on-going joke concerns his all-time highest ranking, which was eleventh -- higher than anyone but Peter remembers. He is playing his thirteenth and last tournament at Wimbledon before he retires to a posh club to teach tennis to rich old ladies. Feeling extra tired, he fully expected to be beaten badly at Wimbledon by the game's young hotshots. And he would have been had he not had his batteries recharged by a cute, up-and-coming American named Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst). He met her in what should have been the most embarrassing of circumstances, but it wasn't for Lizzie, who rather enjoyed accidentally meeting a handsome guy while dressed in her birthday suit. Wrong room, you see. Well, actually you don't see, since this is a PG-13 movie, but Peter did when Lizzie stepped out of the shower.
Bettany and Dunst have great chemistry together. She is a natural beauty without the normal Hollywood tradition of capped teeth, bee-sting lips and augmented breasts. And Bettany is just as good looking in his own natural way. Whenever they are the only ones in the frame, the movie consistently charms.
The supporting cast -- doesn't. They might as well have been referred to as the "distracting cast." Sam Neill, for example, is awkward and embarrassing as Lizzie's clichéd sports father. He is so overprotective that you'd swear that he thinks his daughter is just thirteen and that Peter is a fifty-year-old pervert.
The movie repeatedly and needlessly blows it on too many small details. Are we really to believe that, while in training between their daily matches, the players are constantly drinking beer, sake and whiskey? And would a top female athlete really go around town in four-inch high stiletto heels between matches, where one fall could cause an injury to her ankle and destroy her chances of winning the next day?
"Love means nothing in tennis," Lizzie explains. "It only means you lose." Well, we don't lose because Bettany and Dunst are adorable together. Their love is convincing and sweet. It's just two bad that this isn't a two-person movie.
WIMBLEDON runs 1:35. It is rated PG-13 for "language, sexuality and partial nudity" and would be acceptable for kids around 9 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, September 17, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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