Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, takes a look at a film about a table tennis prodigy who happens to be a real scumbag. Read on!

By MIKE FRIED

Marty Supreme

*** 1/2

Marty Supreme? How about Marty Supreme Asshole!

This movie tells the story of a guy named Marty Mauser who is a table tennis prodigy. He is also an asshole. A huge asshole, a supreme asshole. He’s knocked up his childhood friend and won’t admit paternity. He gets jerked around by his boss because he’s an asshole, and his boss (his uncle) is an asshole because all Marty does is live to play table tennis.

Josh Safdie’s new movie is an enjoyable but muddled mess. Wholly uneven in parts, the movie soars when it deals with Marty playing table tennis and those scenes are absolutely terrific.

And while the movie is great when Marty is playing table tennis, I have to be honest, it kind of drags when Marty is dives into all the mishegoss he gets involved in while he is trying to raise the money to go to Japan.

For those of you who know me, I don’t have the highest of opinions of Timothée Chalamet. I know many people feel he’s the finest actor of his generation and that is their constitutional right.  He has never really impressed me, especially in last year’s A Complete Unknown, which was a performance of pure mimicry.

However, I would be remiss in pointing out that even I thought Timothée Chalamet did a great job in this film. Do I think he deserves an Academy Award? No. I think Leonardo DiCaprio gave the better performance this year. However, the Academy being what they are, I think it is pretty much a lock that he’s going to walk away with the Oscar in 2027, but it shouldn’t be.

Having said that, I don’t think this movie works without Chalamet. I think he is a driven asshole in real life (who else would date a Kardashian, come on!!)  and he drives that into his performance of Marty and he plays the part so well. He lies, he steals, he does whatever he can to claim what he feels is his birthright.  He so embodies the role that he is not playing Marty – he is Marty!!  He seems to be moving even when he isn’t — it is truly a kinetic performance.  I read that he trained for close to 8 years in table tennis and it really shows.  There is no reason other than Timothée Chalamet to see this movie. The movie makes or breaks on his shoulders. And that becomes crystal clear in the final shot of the movie.

I could write paragraphs on how much of an unflattering portrait he and Safdie paint of Jews, especially New York Jews, but I will leave that to a different day. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the phenomenal supporting performance by legendary director Abel Ferrara as Ezra Mishkin, a guy that Marty gets involved with, and who does not seem to be what he appears.  In addition, I was surprised how well non-actor Kevin O’Leary did in his role as Gwyneth Paltrow’s rich asshole millionaire husband –- maybe he wasn’t acting?!?  Paltrow, for her part, has such a small role that she really didn’t make any difference in the overall film.  In fact, she was out-acted by Odessa A’Zion who plays Marty’s childhood friend, Rachel, who he knocks up and then denies paternity – she nevertheless stands by him. And why wouldn’t she be great — she’s the daughter of excellent actress Pamela Adlon.  Sandra Bernhard, Fran Drescher and Penn Jillette’s roles are throwaway cameo performances.

But did this movie really need to be 2 1/2 hours long? It did not and the growing trend of making long movies is something that I just don’t get. Sometimes less is more and if Josh Safdie would have trimmed his script and made it a wee bit more focused and less scattershot, it would’ve been a much more enjoyable film experience.

I am glad I saw it, I liked it, but I will never watch it again and I will never buy it on 4K which is the standard that many of my friends know what makes me like a film.

WATCH IT!

3.5/5

Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.

Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.