Marty Supreme is a 2025 sports comedy-drama directed by Josh Safdie, starring Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, also known as “Mr. Wonderful”, and Tyler Okonma, known by his stage name Tyler, The Creator. In this unpredictable heart-racing film, the audience follows a young Marty Mauser in the 1950s who is trying to pursue his dream of becoming a professional table tennis player, who will quite literally do anything and everything to achieve this dream. While this film is not a biopic, it is loosely based on the legendary American table tennis player Marty Reisman.
We open with a chaotic sequence where we meet our main character, Marty Mauser who is working at a shoe shop in New York. Here we learn he is a very charismatic hustler that is longing to live out his ping pong ambitions. Opening ends with the audience meeting an important side character Rachel, who has a complicated romantic relationship with Marty. The opening scene sets the tone for the film of a high energy, fast paced story.
The director Josh Safdie, is known for his narrative style with obsessed driven characters in an intense setting resulting in an anxiety induced cinematic experience. His style really is shown in this film through the sound, acting, and marketing.
The sound in Marty Supreme is a unique choice, but compliments the film perfectly. While the story takes place in the ’50s, the soundtrack strictly uses ‘80s hit classics like Tears for Fears’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch,” along with other iconic classics. Which then matches the score by Daniel Lopatin, which is fast synth-pop with a ‘80s feel. While the soundtrack does not match the setting of the story taking place in the ‘50s, viewers have often said it oddly matches and works perfectly.
The acting in this film is notably top notch from all the cast. Timothée Chalamet, who plays main character Marty, prepared to do this role for seven years. Chalamet had spent time in between takes when filming other movies to practice playing ping pong, which clearly paid off for making the scenes of ping pong realistic. Chalamet has played a wide range of characters, seeing him in a sports film was refreshing and something viewers have never seen before. Chalamet delivers an award winning performance no doubt, for the audience to be able to root for a complicated narcissistic character is a tough performance to pull off. So far, Chalamet has swept all the award shows for this performance including winning a Golden Globe, Critics Choice award, Astra film award, Palm Springs International film festival award, and has received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. This could arguably be Chalamet’s best performance of his career.
The orange ping pong balls, the Marty Supreme jacket that every celebrity has worn, and the orange blimp, the biggest marketing campaign of the century. Marty Supreme took film marketing to the next level. It all started on Nov. 15, 2025, when Chalamet had posted a video of him in a zoom call with A24 members talking about ideas to market the movie, it was a hilarious video that left everyone confused. But viewers did not realize he was actually going to make those ideas come true. Having orange ping pong balls everywhere from on people’s heads to on the sphere in Las Vegas. The biggest was only yet to come, when Marty Supreme and the brand Nahmias did a collaboration. They had popups in only a tiny amount of cities, you could choose between track pants, keychains, shirts, and a jacket that everyone was after. Celebrities from Justin Bieber to Bill Nye were seen wearing the jacket; it had blown up the internet. From this intense marketing, Marty Supreme was all that people could talk about before it even came out.
Marty Supreme is more than just a film, it is an inspiring story that takes you on a cinematic experience. Undeniably a five star film.
