"We have had some sparky tennis movies recently, such as Luca Guadagnino's Challengers and Reinaldo Marcus Green's King Richard, and it seemed at first as if this coming-of-age comedy from Italian actor turned director Andrea Di Stefano could be joining them. But despite a very robust lead performance from Pierfrancesco Favino, the enjoyably grizzled alpha male of Italian cinema, this completely runs aground in the third act, quite unable to decide if it should offer the traditional comeback story of an underdog sports movie,"
"The setting is the early 1980s and Tiziano Menichelli plays Felice, a 13-year-old kid who has been fanatically schooled by his dad in Italian tennis's lower, relatively undemanding regionals competition. Felice has been taught to revere the stolid, machine-like baseline play of Ivan Lendl, and Felice's grinding efficiency wears down his opponents. But the father then decides that his son deserves glory at the national level and to that end hires a professional coach with money the hard-pressed family really doesn't have."
Set in early 1980s Italy, the film follows 13-year-old Felice, raised by a father who drills him in regimented baseline tennis modeled on Ivan Lendl. The father hires Raul "the Cat" Gatti, a charming, alcoholic ex-player played by Pierfrancesco Favino, to coach Felice on the tougher national under-16 circuit using money the family can scarcely afford. Gatti's machismo, past fame and recent breakdown complicate his mentorship, while the story oscillates between a conventional underdog comeback arc and a critique of win-at-all-costs mentality. The narrative loses focus in the third act and concludes with an irritating, misjudged wink to camera.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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