Shia LaBeouf, founder of the esteemed “HE WON’T DIVIDE US” movement — which resulted in some of the most epic trollerly yet achieved — has a new movie out that almost no one will see, so we’ll tell you a little about it now.
In the indie film Borg/McEnroe, which recently kicked off the Toronto International Film Festival, LaBeouf plays tennis legend John McEnroe in his famous showdown with Bjorn Borg (played by Sverrir Gudnasson). The reviews aren’t good, but Shia-as-McEnroe just might be worth seeing by itself for its self-parodic absurdity.
First, here’s director Janus Metz’ recreation of a famous photo of Borg and McEnroe, which you’ve gotta admit is pretty good:
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Here’s the original:
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Nailed it.
But, according to AV Club‘s A.A. Dowd, other than LaBeouf doing a solid job of channeling his inner “assholery,” the rest of the film’s mediocre at best.
“It’s a sports movie for masochistic, vainglorious athletes,” Dowd writes. “For the rest of us, the film’s minor pleasures lie almost exclusively in LaBeouf’s willingness to lean into his own bad reputation. Like Lars Von Trier and Andrea Arnold before him, Metz harnesses Shia’s assholery instead of trying to disguise it.”
Is watching unathletic Shia trying to play a world-class athlete while indulging his worst inclinations a reason to see the film despite its solid “C” status? Maybe. Just try to resist this face:
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A few more excerpts from Dowd’s review that gives a feel for the film’s overwrought style and tired thematics:
….there’s nothing ideologically at stake, unless one fervently believes that potty-mouths have no place in tennis—so the film is forced to focus more on the players themselves. Screenwriter Ronnie Sandahl’s working theory is (get this) that the two were more alike than different: Laborious origin-story flashbacks to Borg’s youth as a hotheaded prodigy indicate that his famous composure was something he carefully cultivated over time (“Never show another emotion again,” his trainer, played by Stellan Skarsgård, somewhat unbelievably tells him), while scenes behind closed doors demonstrate how McEnroe’s short fuse was more strategy than impulse. But this two-sides-of-the-same-coin dichotomy is about as deep as the psychology runs.
Assumedly aware that he’s making a movie about one of the less inherently cinematic of sporting events, director Janus Metz compensates with a lot of bombastic, jittery style, amplifying the crunch of flashbulbs to a deafening roar, restlessly skittering his camera around, generally taking notes from Ron Howard’s Rush playbook. But there’s not a lot of suspense about where the movie might go, even for the uninitiated, because the out-of-order opening scene blatantly establishes that Wimbledon will come down to these two contenders (lest one fear they have to pay any attention to any of the matches leading up to the finals). This flash-forward opening also labors hard to melodramatically inflate the importance of both the game and this individual rivalry; for as much as Borg/McEnroe makes tennis players look like neurotic, joyless psychos, it also comes close to depicting them as demigods on the court.
Here’s the hilariously melodramatic trailer:
In case you’ve missed some of the recent LaBeouf craziness, here are a few headlines:
Shia LaBeouf Loses His Mind On A Pro-Trump Counterprotester
HILARIOUS: Internet Pranksters Prank Shia LaBeouf Anti-Trump Display AGAIN
As for the tennis legend, he’s recently made headlines as well for predicting that Serena Williams would rank 700 in men’s tennis.