- YEAR: 2004
- DIRECTOR: Richard Loncraine
- KEY ACTORS: Kirsten Dunst, Paul Bettany
- CERTIFICATE: 12A
- IMDB SCORE: 6.3
- ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 61%
SEX SCORE: 4/5
✔️ I watch this most years so, yes, it is rewatchable!
✔️ And I’d absolutely fuck the cast! Who wouldn’t?!
✔️ It did inspire fantasies, but they’re not that specific to this film – to be inspired by love, to have a whirlwind romance that means I achieve my life’s ambition…
✔️ And I am giving it a point for being sex positive! Sex is fun, sex is joyful, and (at the beginning anyway) sex is just about sex and not about love. Lizzie’s father may not approve…but its the distraction he doesn’t like, not the sex itself!
❌ But it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There’s a conversation between Lizzie and a female interviewer that isn’t about men…but she isn’t named.
As always, this contains spoilers so watch the film before you read on…
STREAMING: ITV-X (free with ads), Amazon Prime (rent £3.49, buy £5.99), YouTube (from £2.49). For a full list of streaming options, check out JustWatch.com
I don’t agree with the concept of a guilty pleasure. Unless your pleasure is illegal and you are literally guilty of a crime, there’s no reason to feel ashamed or embarrassed for enjoying yourself. Like what you like and don’t let society make you feel bad about it! Because too often those pleasures are only considered guilty because they are marketed towards women (the shame!) or are indulgent and might encourage you to enjoy your body at any size (the scandal!). They are guilty in the eyes of the patriarchy, which makes me want to enjoy them even more…but Wimbledon is a guilty pleasure of mine.
And I don’t think of it as a guilty pleasure because it’s a chick flick or light entertainment. This is the closest I get to a guilty pleasure because I love it, I LOVE it, even though it’s objectively bad. It’s not that good a romcom and it’s a very bad sports movie so that should put me off, but I love it. (But, god, the tennis is so bad…)
Wimbledon is a movie about British tennis player, Peter Colt (Bettany), who has reached the end of his career and has decided that this year’s Wimbledon Championship will be his last tournament. Early in the film, he has a Meet-Cute with Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst), an up and coming player who is tipped to win her first Grand Slam. He is bumbling and polite, she is flirty and a little sexually aggressive, and they start a secret relationship, against the wishes of Lizzie’s father (Sam Neill) who wants her to focus on her tennis. And Peter starts winning! In fact, he wins the whole tournament!! Lizzie doesn’t; she is knocked out earlier than she should have, which acts as the romcom crisis point around which their final reconciliation could rotate, because they do fall in love and do live happily ever after.
I think it’s fair to say that I love this movie because I have a massive crush on this version of Paul Bettany. Between this and A Knights Tale, there is something very appealing about his blonde, perpetually almost sunburnt British character. He’s a stereotype, but it’s one that he does well! There’s a charming politeness about him and a gallantry that is so British and so reminiscent of a time and a type of person that doesn’t really exist but is still kind of aspirational nonetheless. And I like the chemistry between him and Dunst. I like that she is the power in the relationship and he is just along for the ride; I like how clearly in awe of her he is and how astonished he is that she likes him. It’s kind of adorable!
But this is a terrible tennis movie. There are a surprising number of films about tennis but it seems to be a very difficult sport to portray as very few of them get it right! It is historically fascinating to watch this now as it reminds me quite how much the tournament has changed in 20 years – no roof being the key so a rain delay can be a plot point that doesn’t exist anymore! It is possible that I’m too judgemental because I am a huge fan – I’ve been to Wimbledon greater than 10 times and it’s one of my favourite places in the world – but I find it very distracting that they clearly only had access to Centre Court for the final and all the other rounds were played on outdoor courts, even the semi-final! This was made before Andy Murray rose to prominence, when Tim Henman reaching the semi-finals at Wimbledon was an astonishing achievement and Fred Perry was still the last male British Grand Slam champion. If a British player was going deep into the tournament, every one of their matches would be on a show court! Why set your movie in a real tournament if you don’t have enough access to the real place or the budget to recreate it?
Even worse, I don’t think the actual tennis play is very good. It sounds great and Roger Ebert was a fan, but 2000s computer animation wasn’t yet good enough to hide the fact that the ball isn’t really there, and the panting and grunting was a caricature, not an attraction. (See next week’s review of Challengers: sweat. The sweat is not good here.) Also, would a wannabe champion go for a road run in someone else’s Converses if they’re midway through a tournament you were hoping to win? Hmmm… It feels like a movie that wasn’t so much made by a tennis fan, but rather one set at a tennis tournament because it offered a plot structure with a controlled timeline and one where a character could succeed at the expense of another without it being too controversial.
And that’s the key – it’s not controversial. Wimbledon is a really nice film and it makes me happy to watch it. To quote Roger Ebert, it’s a ‘well-behaved movie about nice people who have good things happen to them‘ and there aren’t really enough of those around. Normally there needs to be more drama, more risk. I normally don’t like romcoms – I have to leave the room too often as I cannot bear the contrived and awkward set pieces and I have such a strong sense of second-hand embarrassment that I can’t watch. But this is sweet; it’s pleasant and there isn’t really an enemy (the antagonist mean tennis player is barely a feature). And so it’s easy to watch!
Now, on its 20th anniversary, I think this ease and this calm takes on special power. It reminds me of a time that simply doesn’t exist anymore. So much has changed that 2004 feels like a lifetime ago! (I mean, it genuinely is a lifetime for actual grown adults but that’s another problem for me…) Of course, nostalgia by definition forgets all the bad bits, but Wimbledon really does make the early 2000s look peaceful. Simple, even. And a place where wonderful, extraordinary things could happen.
Think about the tennis world in 2004 – Roger Federer had won his first Grand Slam title just the year before in 2003 and, while he would win three more in 2004 and start to show the world the kind of champion that he would be, we weren’t there yet. Nadal wouldn’t win a Grand Slam until 2005 and Djokovic in 2008. The Williams’s sisters were dominating – Serena had 7 major titles and Venus had 6 already – but the men’s game was wide open. It was only three years since Goran Ivanišević did exactly what Wimbledon imagined for Peter – was given a wild card when ranked 125 in the world and went on to win the title thanks to a helpful rain delay – and, without sounding too wide-eyed, Wimbledon makes it feel like this was a time when miracles could happen, when dreams might inexplicably come true.
And, although I was only 19 in 2004 and still dating my high school boyfriend so had limited personal experience, my rose-tinted glasses make the dating scene seem less complicated 20 years ago as well. Sure, people still behaved badly and broke hearts and were lovelorn and lonely, but dating apps didn’t exist, incels weren’t mainstream, social media hadn’t been invented yet, and the overexposed swipe-and-discard culture that Tinder has spawned was many years away. Whether this is accurate or not, falling in love seems much simpler!
It’s a feeling that Wimbledon leans into but, to my mind, manages to do so without being too saccharine or ridiculous. Ebert described it as having a ‘certain welcome warmth,’ and it really does! The quaint Britishness of it, the slightly bumbling Hugh Grant-esque upper middle class propriety and our recent history with similar Richard Curtis movies made it feel possible to fall in love in two weeks and be happy for ever.
Wimbledon makes me feel like anything is possible! Whether that be love or success or a miracle, anything is achievable in the world of Wimbledon. Love makes everything better; love makes anything possible. It’s just that simple in this movie world. This is a sentiment shared by Tara Kenny in their Guardian article looking back on this move on it’s 20th anniversary: ‘Wimbledon’s joy lies in surrendering to a universe in which extraordinary things come to unremarkable people, even when they mainly can’t muster the strength to try very hard…Perhaps most pertinently, if you’re struggling to accept your own mediocrity, Wimbledon encourages you to stave off gloomy reality and hold on to those delusions of grandeur for just a little longer.’
So I always find myself forgiving Wimbledon for its bad tennis and unrealistic timeline and cliched plot because there’s a little bit of magic in it. And really, that’s all I want in a movie…
NEXT TIME… Challengers
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Do you like this film? I’d love to hear your thoughts!