Marty Supreme

Sports biopics usually follow some predictable beats. We focus on a talented outsider battling in the minor leagues, then getting a big break, suffering a setback or two, and finally winning the trophy and/or the girl. This film is … different.

It starts with Marty, a skinny shoe store clerk, carrying on a risky affair with a married woman called Rachel in the stockroom. The opening credits show sperm artfully fertilising an ovum that morphs into a ping-pong ball. OK, wasn’t expecting that. From there things get stranger. Marty robs the store to fund a trip to the table tennis world championships in London where he defrauds the organising committee by staying in the Ritz on expenses, where he starts yet another affair with an actress married to a wealthy pen magnate.

After losing in the final he returns to New York for an extended subplot involving collapsing bathtubs, gangsters, angry farmers and a missing dog. Wait, what? There’s also something about novelty orange ping pong balls and a hustle in a bowling alley to make money to pay off a fine, a stolen necklace (that turns out to be worthless) and bribing a policeman to ignore a case of having sex in the middle of Central Park. Or something. Oh, and the Harlem Globetrotters are somehow involved.

Timothy Chalomet is great in the title role, playing against type as a skinny, intense hustler with glasses, bad skin and a weasly moustache. The character of Marty is supposedly loosely based on the real life Marty Reisman who was still winning table tennis tournaments in his 60s. Whether he got up to half of the exploits in this movie is never really explained.

I’m pretty sure I stayed awake through the two and half hour run time, but there were plenty of moments where the plot takes yet another screeching handbrake turn away from the expected ping pong pic that made me feel I’d missed something.