Superbrat. That was how John McEnroe was best known. Not as arguably the greatest tennis player of his generation, but for his hair trigger temper and self-destructive tantrums on the court.
In the 1970s, tennis shifted (against all odds) from the pursuit of white-suited-clad gentlemen to a star-driven, rock and roll sport with hooting crowds and pin-up players. Yet, even in that new era of high-octane sets and high viewing figures, McEnroe was a foul-mouthed ratings-driver who to this day remains a byword for volatility. In recent years his mercurial personality does not overshadow his genius as much as it did, but he’s still a point of fascination for audiences and filmmakers. Indeed. it seems like movies about him appear in mixed doubles. In 2018 we had both the narrative Borg vs McEnroe and the clinical, analytical John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection: now, just after the re-released of 1982’s The French comes McEnroe, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival before being served on Showtime this coming September.
So is there anything left to say about the German-born, Queens-raised former enfant terrible of the tennis world? Plenty, it seems, and much of it comes from his own mouth in this surprisingly intimate, confessional, and often apologetic mouth. Even at 63, with his singles career over for nearly three decades, it feels like we’re no closer to understanding how he could have ascended so meteorically while also becoming the bad boy of an era in the sport that produced nothing but party animals.
Director Barney Douglas has focused on Britain’s other great summer pursuit, cricket in both his 2015 debut, Warriors, and his 2019 follow-up, The Edge. In both, he looked to a larger sociological truth, but McEnroe is part portrait, part confessional (he may as well be credited as McEnroe’s 38th therapist). He pulls together material that has been covered in those earlier films – how the prodigy’s talent for precision over power was at odds with his volatile personality, the rock and roll ambition – but from McEnroe’s perspective.
The most intriguing and touching addition may well be the discussion of his relationship with his father/manager, a relationship that was perpetually unbalanced and that sent much of his own fatherhood into disarray. Was that dysfunction what wrecked his first marriage, to actress Tatum O’Neill? Maybe, maybe not, but McEnroe takes on a large portion of the blame here. He doesn’t take much credit for the success of his second marriage, to actual rock star (and almost David Lee Roth replacement in Van Halen) Patty Smyth. Instead, he credits that relationship with his current stability (or at least as close as he will seemingly ever get).
Ultimately, McEnroe is neither hagiography or mea culpa. Instead, depending on your viewpoint, it’s either a testament to a life survived or a poignant retrospective on McEnroe’s tarnished greatness: But most of all it’s a depiction of a man who still sees himself as a work in progress.
This article appears in June 17 • 2022.
