Zendaya's steamy tennis movie Challengers aces its critics' reviews as they ... trends now

Zendaya's new film Challengers has served up an ace with movie critics.

The movie currently holds a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was praised for being a 'slick, sexy, hugely entertaining tennis romantic triangle' by Ty Burr from The Washington Post.  

Meanwhile the Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney summarized the film as 'Smart, seductive and bristling with sexual tension' adding that 'Challengers is arguably Luca Guadagnino's most purely pleasurable film to date; it’s certainly his lightest and most playful.' 

In Challengers, which is set for release on April 26, Zendaya's, 27, character - an aspiring tennis star Tashi Duncan - gives up her career after suffering a major injury.

Instead, she focuses on coaching her colleague Art, played by Mike Faist, whom she falls in love with and marries.

But Tashi finds her feelings dangerously divided after Art is enrolled on the Challenger Tour, where he faces off against Tashi's ex-boyfriend Patrick, played by Josh O'Connor.

'The movie's a paean to hard work and hedonism, and if its pleasures are mostly surface — grass, clay, emotional — it's still been too long since we've had an intelligent frolic like this,' Burr added in his review. 

Amy Nicholson from The Los Angeles Times calls it 'a trim, naughty, ferociously well-acted trifle about characters more likely to scrawl something foul on a bathroom stall than quote Heraclitus.'

She adds, 'Zendaya's performance slices through the noise... She gets the funniest, meanest comebacks and holds the screen like a woman in command, even when she allows the film to leer.'

'It wants to engage and entertain you, and it does that very nicely,' Manohla Dargis of the New York Times wrote about the film. 

Brian Truitt from USA Today suggested that the movie, 'Falls nebulously somewhere between a coming-of-age flick, dysfunctional relationship drama and snazzy sports extravaganza, Guadagnino nevertheless holds serve with yet another engaging, hot-blooded tale of flawed humans figuring out their feelings.' 

'A funny, tempestuous, and exuberantly lusty story about how three athletic demigods see their destinies upended. And Guadagnino tells it the way he knows best, with a sometimes exasperating but ultimately irresistible surfeit of style,' Justin Chang of the New Yorker wrote.

David Sims from The Atlantic praised the film for being 'far more thrilling, and triumphant, than a simple tale of someone lifting a trophy, or love conquering all.'