Tennis Anyone? Anti-American Backlash

[tabuno]

Wimbledon (2004)

[Spoilers]

Finally got around to seeing the movie Wimbledon that was shot during and at the Wimbledon tournament in 2003. What is interesting about this movie is the actual tennis and the script/plot and its impact on an American audience.

1. Tennis. As a former high school tennis player, I found the tennis action quite good and wondered how did they do it. Was the ball really in play or was in superimposed through special effects. The actual tennis shown and the players appeared to be quite good.

2. British winners and American losers. Did this movie fail at the box office because the American male tennis finalist was a jerk and the American female star lose in the semi-finals while the British male star made it and won Wimbledon. I assume it had some impact on the box office revenue. How does one factor into a movie the political contents a movie and the quality of the movie and how well it does?

[arsaib4]

Originally posted by tabuno
Did this movie fail at the box office because the American male tennis finalist was a jerk and the American female star lose in the semi-finals while the British male star made it and won Wimbledon. I assume it had some impact on the box office revenue. How does one factor into a movie the political contents a movie and the quality of the movie and how well it does?

I can't comment on the quality of the film since I didn't get to see it in theatres although I'm a big enough fan of both Bettany and Dunst that I'll give it a shot on dvd. But I don't think the American B.O was impacted by the fact that the portrayed of it's tennis stars wasn't postive or for any other political reason. I love the sport, my second favorite after Football (Soccer) but it's not a very popular sport in the U.S and a fun romantic comedy about it just didn't work with the audiences if it was a good one. However, If you sample the reviews at 'Metacritic' they're mostly postive with the worst grade being 50, not bad at all.

On the other hand it did very well to recover it's budget of $31 million, by staying at top of the U.K box-office for atleast 3 weeks in a row and if you're a tennis fan you'd exactly know why. The British haven't won a Wimbledon tournament in more than 50 years and the public every year pins it's hopes on Tim Henman only to get disappointed year after year so obviously this film provided some relief. Peter Bradshaw in 'The Guardian' wrote, "You've heard of Bend It Like Beckham. This can only be described as Don't Cock It Up Like Henman. It's a film about tennis, a sport now exceeded in dullness only by formula one, and it concerns an Englishman who - wait for it - gets to the final at Wimbledon!"

[tabuno]

Your comment about British tennis could be translated to USA tennis to a lesser extent. Other tennis players from other countries are beginning to eclipse American players now. So if one had a tennis movie showing the male American winning Wimbledon (or perhaps the a female American winning) and then the "weaker" British woman losing (or British male losing), I wonder if the American public would have had a tendency to give this movie a bigger send up. [Relocate the movie to the U.S. Open and have it shot in New York instead]. What kind of American response would such a movie get I wonder.