{"id":374152,"date":"2025-12-27T02:07:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T02:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374152\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T02:07:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T02:07:21","slug":"a-ping-pong-specific-review-of-marty-supreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/374152\/","title":{"rendered":"A Ping-Pong-Specific Review of \u2018Marty Supreme\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s gripping new movie is earning rave reviews and plenty of Oscar buzz. But how\u2019s the pong?\"\"<\/p>\n

In the beginning of Marty Supreme, our protagonist, Marty Mauser (Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet), is a shoe salesman working at his uncle\u2019s shop. A woman (Odessa A’zion) enters the store and says she left her old shoes after she bought a new pair, and she asks Marty to help search for them in the back. Away from everyone\u2019s view, the two of them start hooking up before the opening credits, during which we witness, in surprisingly microscopic detail, a swarm of sperm racing to fertilize an egg. Then, the egg morphs into [checks notes] a ping-pong ball.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two thoughts: After he codirected Uncut Gems, whose opening credits feature Adam Sandler\u2019s character going through a colonoscopy, we now know that Josh Safdie is the true sicko (complimentary) of the family (complimentary). Also, this is arguably the only time in the history of pop culture that we\u2019d associate ping-pong\u2014sometimes derided as closer to chess than a physically demanding sport\u2014with people who fuck. Challengers<\/a>, eat your heart out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marty Supreme is appointment viewing over the holidays for so many reasons. It\u2019s the latest in a long line of Chalamet bangers, cementing him as the defining movie star of his generation. It arrives in the year of the Safdie Split<\/a>, which, given the lukewarm reception to Benny Safdie\u2019s The Smashing Machine, proves that Josh is the brother with the juice. It\u2019s got overwhelmingly positive reviews and could be a major player throughout awards season. But for me, it\u2019s a chance to see a sport that I once fell in love with finally get the cinematic treatment it deserves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allow me to explain. It\u2019s become an amusing bit of lore in The Ringer\u2019s Slack channels over the years that I used to compete in ping-pong tournaments. Very specifically, this was during middle school, when my family moved us to Panama. Just saying the words \u201cPanamanian ping-pong circuit\u201d sounds like a bit, but I assure you it\u2019s not. For two glorious years, I competed at weekend tournaments across Panama City malls\u2014many at Multiplaza<\/a>; shout-out to their food court for holding me down\u2014and got hooked. My finest athletic achievement is probably beating a ranked kid rocking an all-Butterfly outfit<\/a> from a local ping-pong academy I earned a couple of trophies, none of which correctly spelled my name; \u201cMilyes Sureyl\u201d has a poetic ring to it, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Upon moving to Hong Kong, my ping-pong mania subsided\u2014turns out, the Panamanian ping-pong circuit doesn\u2019t hold a candle to high school tryouts in another hemisphere. Now, I prefer spending my days playing (non-table) tennis, and whatever magic flowed through my ping-pong paddle back then has been lost to time. (This has proved particularly embarrassing whenever I\u2019ve played Ringer colleagues in ping-pong; my apologies to Brian Phillips for getting his hopes up that he\u2019d see something transcendent.) But watching Marty Supreme conjured up those old memories, and with them, the opportunity to assess the film for its most important qualities: Just how accurately did it capture the sport\u2014and yes, it is a sport\u2014of ping-pong? Let\u2019s break it down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More on \u2018Marty Supreme\u2019 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More on \u2018Marty Supreme\u2019 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The Real Marty Supreme<\/p>\n

While Marty Supreme hasn\u2019t explicitly marketed itself as a biopic, the film is loosely based on the life of professional ping-pong player Marty Reisman<\/a>. Reisman, who died in 2012, competed at the World Table Tennis Championships five times from 1948 to 1952. He took home bronze in each of them and won two United States Opens and a British Open. He also became the sport\u2019s oldest champion at 67 by winning the United States National Hardbat Championship in 1997.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, for all his accomplishments, Reisman was better known for the irresistible\u2014and, at times, contentious\u2014flair he brought to the sport. As we see from Chalamet\u2019s Mauser during one sequence at a bowling alley, the real-life Reisman was also a hustler. He intentionally lost games at Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Club before convincing his marks to double their money. Reisman once tried to place a $500 bet on himself<\/a> with someone he thought was a bookie, but the man was, in fact, the head of the United States Table Tennis Association.<\/p>\n

Other times, Reisman would give opponents an 18-point handicap in a set to 21, or sit in a folding chair, or play with a Coke can instead of a paddle. \u201cI took on people in the gladiatorial spirit,\u201d Reisman told The New York Times in 2012<\/a>. \u201cNever backed down from a bet.\u201d He briefly appeared on an episode<\/a> of The Late Show With David Letterman in 2008 and, naturally, was asked to perform a trick where he would use a ping-pong ball to split a cigarette in half. Still, none of this flamboyance would be possible if Reisman weren\u2019t also preternaturally gifted at ping-pong. The journalist Sir Harold Evans\u2014himself a former competitive player\u2014once said that Reisman had the \u201cgreatest drop shot ever seen on the face of the earth.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, ping-pong has only recently begun to make waves in the United States. While it\u2019s the sixth-most popular sport in the world\u2014ahead of even basketball\u2014it wasn’t until 2023 that ping-pong had its own professional league in the U.S., Major League Table Tennis<\/a>. (The good news: In just two years, Major League Table Tennis has already seen a 1,200 percent growth in viewership<\/a>.) In that respect, Reisman was ahead of his time: a showman whose exploits didn\u2019t get the fanfare it deserved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Paddle-Gate\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A major moment in the beginning of Marty Supreme is the 1952 British Open, a tournament the cocksure Mauser expects to win. Sure enough, Mauser coasts to the final, but he\u2019s promptly defeated by Koto Endo (as played by real-life pro Koto Kawaguchi), a prodigious Japanese player. Mauser doesn\u2019t take the defeat well and responds by hurling a trash can across the room. But Mauser\u2019s biggest gripe is that Endo didn\u2019t beat him on merit: His opponent\u2019s paddle was a cheat code.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where we get into the weeds of ping-pong. Mauser\u2014and in real life, Reisman\u2014rocked what\u2019s known as a hardbat paddle, which was covered with a thin layer of pimpled rubber over wood. In the film, Endo has a unique paddle; one side features a smooth, thicker, spongier rubber that makes it easier to generate topspin. Initially, Mauser struggles to even return Endo\u2019s serve, a consequence of dealing with this new paddle\u2014and the way the ball moves\u2014in real time. Complicating matters further, Endo’s power and placement behind well-differentiated serves put Mauser on his back foot throughout the match, all with the flick of a wrist This mirrors Reisman\u2019s own beef with Hiroji Satoh, a Japanese player who beat him with a sponge rubber paddle<\/a> at the World Championships in 1952.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nowadays, paddles with sponge rubber on both sides are the norm, although there are many different variations<\/a> depending on feel, hardness, and level of topspin. Still, the old-school hardbat paddles that Reisman once championed can still be found on the market<\/a>; in fact, those were the ones I used back in Panama. I loved how it suited my game, which relied more on flattening out my forehand against heavy topspin As Reisman once said<\/a> of the hardbat: \u201cThis racket is the purest reflection of a player\u2019s ability.\u201d Hard agree.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ping-Pong Globetrotters<\/p>\n

In the semifinals of the British Open, Mauser defeats longtime champion Bela Kletzki (Geza Rohrig). After the match, the two of them have dinner, where Kletzki tries convincing Mauser to team up with him and become a side act at Harlem Globetrotters games. (When it\u2019s clear that Kletzki is going to lose the semis, they have a highlight-reel point filled with ridiculous trick shots, much to the delight of the crowd.) Mauser is against the idea, believing that he\u2019s above becoming a circus attraction. But when Mauser gets some bad bounces\u2014on and off the table\u2014he ends up joining Kletzki and the Globetrotters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the film, we see Mauser and Kletzki perform tricks in various ways: reciting \u201cMary Had a Little Lamb\u201d by bouncing ping-pong balls on frying pans, playing on their hands and knees on a tiny table, rallying with five balls at once, and even facing off against a walrus As it happens, Reisman really did perform with the Globetrotters<\/a> alongside Douglas Cartland, a former pro who played doubles with Reisman at the 1952 World Table Tennis Championships. Sadly, I can\u2019t find any video evidence of their performances\u2014or whether Reisman did actually go up against a walrus\u2014but based on what we see in Marty Supreme, these guys really knew how to put on a show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ping-Pong\u2019s Unremarkable Cinematic History\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some sports are inherently more cinematic than others; boxing, for instance, has a rich history of genuinely excellent films like Raging Bull, Rocky, Ali, and Million Dollar Baby. Conversely, ping-pong has a less than impressive filmography. If you exclude the ping-pong scenes from Forrest Gump\u2014which is only a small sliver of the running time\u2014then we\u2019re left with a pretty thin crop of movies, including the coming-of-age indie Ping Pong Summer, the underdog comedy Ping Pong Playa, and the documentary Ping Pong, which follows a group of 80-plus seniors still playing competitively.<\/p>\n

For better or worse, the ping-pong film with the biggest cultural footprint is probably Balls of Fury, in which child prodigy Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) is recruited by the FBI to compete in a (literal) sudden death tournament organized by a Triad leader (somehow, Christopher Walken). It\u2019s basically table tennis Bloodsport, with Fogler doing his best Jack Black impression and Walken chewing through scenery saying ping-paaaang in his iconic accent. Is Balls of Fury a good movie? Absolutely not. Do I have a well-used DVD of it at home? Absolutely yes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of which to say: The sport hasn\u2019t gotten its due on the big screen\u2014but then came Marty Supreme. A contender for the best film of the year, it manages to bottle that familiar Uncut Gems anxiety into a globe-trotting saga about ping-pong. And while some people might laugh at ping-pong, of all things, getting the A24 prestige treatment, that kind of incredulity is baked into the script. Mauser is constantly belittled for chasing a dream nobody believes in\u2014to most people, ping-pong is the domain of dorm rooms and rec centers, not selling out stadiums overseas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Marty Supreme treats ping-pong with the kind of reverence usually reserved for flashier sports like boxing, football, and basketball. It\u2019s a movie that understands the line between a \u201chobby\u201d and a \u201ccalling\u201d can be razor-thin, especially when everyone in Mauser\u2019s life insists he\u2019s playing a game that doesn\u2019t matter. Trust me, I get it. Once upon a time, that Panamanian ping-pong circuit was the center of my universe; the malls were a proving ground where some middle-schooler with an antiquated paddle could take on peers decked out in sponsored gear. There was nothing more satisfying than daring to make that dream a reality. Marty Supreme gets that impulse. It dignifies it. Now, the rest of the world can believe it, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Miles Surrey<\/p>\n

<\/a>Miles writes about television, film, and whatever your dad is interested in. He is based in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s gripping new movie is earning rave reviews and plenty of Oscar buzz. But how\u2019s the pong?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-374152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}