December 30, 2025 – This comedy drama is very frustrating because it doesn't really have a plot. It is more like a collection of wildly improbable, loosely connected vignettes strung together into something that vaguely resembles a narrative. While it doesn't have a plot, it does have some great performances, headlined by the much heralded Timothée Chalamet.

Chalamet (“Dune”) plays ping pong hustler Marty Mauser, a shoe salesman who has huge ambitions for himself, but his greatest talent is that of a con man who is very good at separating people from their money and persuading people to do things for him. Working in his uncle Murray's (played by Larry 'Ratso' Sloman) shoe store, he is trying to make enough money to get to London to play in a major table tennis tournament. At the same time, he is in a torrid affair with a married woman, Rachel Mizler (Odessa A'zion of “She Rides Shotgun”).

When Murray takes off without paying him, Marty stages a fake robbery to get the money from Murray's safe he needs for trip to London. In London he makes it to the finals of the tournament, only to be beaten by a skilled Japanese player, Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi). Along the way, he manages to seduce a movie star, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow of the Iron Man and Avengers movies) and to make a valuable connection with her wealthy husband, Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary).

When he returns to the states, he finds out that Rachel is pregnant with his baby. He, of course, denies he is the father, but the two of them end up in a series of wildly improbable adventures involving Kay Stone, Milton Rockwell, Marty's hustler friend, Wally (Tyler Okonma, AKA Tyler the Creator) a bathtub falling through the floor, a missing dog named Moses, the dog's dangerous owner, an exploding gas station, a gang of toughs Marty and Wally hustled, a shootout over Moses and some angry people that Marty persuaded to back him in a business venture.

It was hard for me to keep track of what was going on, but I believe they never did find Moses, who got left behind when the gas station exploded. Along the way, Rachel Mizler is wounded, but not killed, during the Moses shootout. Also along the way, Marty and Kay Stone have to bribe police with expensive jewelry to avoid an indecent exposure rap. All of this chaos is the result of Marty's desperate attempts to raise money so that he can compete in the world table tennis championships in Tokyo.

Marty finally gets to Tokyo, but isn't able to play in the tournament. Instead, he plays in a staged publicity game with the Japanese champion, his old nemesis, Edo. While this match, which Marty had to humiliate himself for, leads to the film's climax, it isn't believable because Marty is not authentic. Nevertheless, Chalamet gives a great performance, and so does Odessa A'zion, whose character, Rachel Mizler, proves to be a skilled hustler in her own right.

The movie is “loosely inspired” by accounts of the exploits of ping pong hustler Marty Reisman. Some of what is depicted in the movie really happened, but a lot of it did not. Marty Reisman was a good player, but he was not the best player in the world. He's a lot like Minnesota Fats, the stuff of legend. In the movie, Marty uses people and disposes of them so often without regard that his final show of sincerity is not believable. We are asked to believe he actually cares for someone besides himself. I couldn't believe it. This movie rates a B.

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