Review of John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (2018) by Dufuspsychic — 29 May 2019

Given the material, I was really looking forward to watching this film. However, the ultimate effect was more mixed than I expected. I found it's attempts to link cinema and sport rather laboured and instead of allowing me to make my own connections, it had a terrible habit of telling me what to think.

By the time it had gotten round to covering the effect of the cameras on the player (admittedly more interesting) and then onto a particular game, I had pretty much lost interest. One minute I'm being told the films contains the feeling of McEnroe in his immediacy, but the filmmaker's method means I'm always stepping back from the material.

It's then much less involving than say 'Amy' (about Amy Winehouse) where the visual material and audio recordings do the heavy lifting. For me, that is cinema, not a heavy-handed film essay about film about a tennisplayer.

The aforementioned immediacy is clobbered out of existence. Disappointing.