Contrived and clichéd sports romance that always takes expected turn

Rating: 2/10 (20 August 2005)

I wasn't expecting Schindler's List when I sat down to watch Wimbledon, but this movie scrapes the bottom of the barrel when it comes to supposed lighthearted romantic fare. Professional tennis players Peter and Lizzie simply meet, have sex and fall in love before we've seen them have a meaningful conversation. Throughout the movie, we never learn exactly what these two see in each other. We're supposed to blindly believe that they met and fell madly in love for no reason, with Lizzie suddenly becoming a muse for an over-the-hill tennis player. There is absolutely no suspense in any of the tennis matches, and every turn is completely obvious. With such a weak script and such a phoned in performance by Kirsten Dunst, this played like a bad TV movie of the week.