Haha, I'm glad you said this because the biggest issue I have with the film is Zendaya although I think her role in the film is interesting and ultimately sort of key to one element of the film that is successful.Big Magilla wrote
Zendaya is fine but it's never explained why her character is so cranky, or as one of the twins said in their YouTube review, so mean.
Zendaya is fine in this film. She's playing someone who comes across as more of an unknowable idea than a person. At this point, that's true for Zendaya as well. Like Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, she's TOTALLY in her ingenue phase. I think that's okay because that's basically what draws Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist to her in the first place. But I'll be frank: she seems like a kid throughout the whole film. I get that she's 27 but she still seems like a Disney kid. It's hard to take her character's span of age seriously. Her indignation still seems like a tantrum. It's also one of the reasons why it's more of a flirty than sexy film.
However, I think that's one of the reasons why for me the film was such a farce. They all just seem like a bunch of kids who are hung up on each other. But also... Zendaya is kind of unimportant in this film. She's really just someone who gets in between these two guys and I was incredibly impressed at the specific behavior that Luca Guadignino has them depict on-screen, some of which is wildly "un-masculine." There is a scene late in the film between Mike Faist and Zendaya that is so vulnerable and tells you everything about how he loves her and how it makes her feel.
I think the best shot for Challengers at the Oscars is if it's a big hit. Right now, it's looking at a weekend gross of $15m so it needs to be a sleeper and its B+ Cinemascore doesn't indicate that's going to happen. On a $55m budget, it already looks pretty shaky. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why it's not doing that well but one of them might be simple. Has a tennis movie ever done well?
I think it's best chances are for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. If it's a barren year, it's prospects could extend to Zendaya (because she has to get her first nomination for something).