If you think that this film will show you anything to do with John McEnroe or indeed give you any insight into tennis, the French Open etc etc then do not waste your money. This film should never have been released it is that bad.

Essentially some ex French tennis coach ( who never coached any professional players ) who is now literally 100 years old used to film many of the matches at Roland Garros in a typically French attempt at trying to unlock and discover the key to creating a true champion ( last time I looked Renee Lacoste was the only player who actually won anything! ) This being French and clearly pretentious meant that he amassed hundreds of cine cam reels of footage. The footage wasn't like you would see in a normal match, ie baseline to baseline, it was simply footage of a player om the baseline. In this case the idiot who directed this film decided they would use McEnroe to build the film around, although you only see McEnroe hit literally 30 balls. This film is balls.

It is quite simply scene after scene of close up shots of McEnroe on the baseline at Roland Garros, hitting a few serves, some in slow-mo some not and generally chatting away to himself and the umpires/lines judges in his usual way. All the while there is the most ludicrous commentary of pseudo sports science, philosophical nonsense that somehow is applied to one man playing tennis and then utterly awful cut scenes that show camera film calibrations and other rubbish.

Imagine a French art student being asked to make a film that loosely concerns some old man who used to be a tennis coach and was allowed to film every single match at Roland Garros for many years to analyse the sport, ask them to try and create some mythical, magical, almost poetic narrative to run alongside it, full of deep philosophical ramblings and then times this by 1000, you may get somewhere near what this disaster was.

The trailer for this film would have you believe it is a documentary about McEnroe at Roland Garros, it is not, instead it is likely the most embarrassing mess that I have ever watched.

Go on I dare you, watch this film and then tell me that you don't agree?

I have to say that the team did a great job of reviewing thousands of minutes of John McEnroe game footage shot for coaching analysis purposes and making a movie of it. That said, this is the sort of thing I'd enjoy watching on tv on a lazy Saturday afternoon perhaps but when it was presented as a movie, in a cinema, about one of tennis's game changers and precocious characters, it was disappointing. I've read the glowing critics reviews and have to say these people must be devotees of the great man to be so entranced by this doco. I wanted so much more than this was ever able to deliver, given its origins. To be fair, I didn't read the reviews or the synopsis in enough detail I guess to realize what I was in for. I fell for the poster and the log line and my own wish for the inside story rather than what this really was. It's a love letter from a coaching analyst that few outside that narrow realm will really get into. It's as French as a Citroen. The film celebrates his uniqueness, his unpredictability. But I wish it was a lot more entertaining and insightful than I found it to be.