Marty Supreme is a bad movie. Nevertheless, it has a baffling 94 percent favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of Oscar Buzz. It stars Timothee Chalamet. It is contrived, mediocre, and annoying.

Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a 23-year-old shoe salesman in 1952 New York whose entire driving force is an ambition to become the world’s greatest table-tennis player. He dominates players in New York, but the real goal is to win the championship tournaments in London and Tokyo.

Marty Supreme revolves around the escapades of Marty trying to scrape together enough money to make these trips. To that end, he is willing to do anything, and the nearly three-hour film is composed of all the ridiculous and unbelievable obstacles put in his way. It’s as if in writing the script, two 10-year-olds looked at each other and said, “Hey! He’s a guy who loves ping-pong! But he doesn’t have any money! So he caves through the floor of a hotel! Then robs a gangster! Who owns a dog! Then he meets an actress!”

It’s just one ridiculous battle after another. As played by Chalamet, Marty is like Ben Shapiro with ADHD and a lower voice.

Marty Mauser is not a good person. He robs the shoe store where he works—a store owned by his uncle, no less—at gunpoint. It’s the same store where he impregnates a young married woman. Staying at a fleabag hotel, he causes an accident that seriously hurts another man, then loses the man’s dog, and then causes the death of the man who finds the dog. Marty insults the memory of a man who fought in World War II and does so while sitting face-to-face with the man’s father. He meets a famous actress, who is also married. He sleeps with her and steals from her to fund his trip.

The problem with the character of Marty is not that he’s a lowlife, it’s that director and screenwriter Josh Safdie also wants to make him the hero. If you create a character who’s a sociopath, then make him a sociopath. It’s a lot more entertaining.

Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight (2008) is mesmerizing and funny precisely because Ledger puts the character so far outside the boundaries of morality and taste. When the Joker is asked if he thinks he can just steal from gangsters and walk away, and he replies, “Yeah,” it’s funny because it’s so outlandish, and we are meant to know this. When Marty is asked a similar question about whether he thinks he can just get by on hustling and attitude, and whether he “thinks it’s that simple,” he replies, “Yeah, I do.” Unlike with Ledger, however, the line falls flat. Marty is just unlikable and uninteresting. Why are we spending nearly three hours with him?

The most incredible flaw in Marty Supreme is that we are never pressured to worry about Marty’s motivation. Why is he obsessed with table tennis? How did a Jewish kid from the Lower East Side get so captivated by the game? Why does it mean so much to him? We’re never told. One critic had no issue with this:

The pace of this movie is whitewater rapid; it never slows down even when it’s running in loops. You could argue that this leaves the movie somewhat empty, that the whole thing doesn’t amount to much. But I object to this framing. I strenuously object. It is, in fact, the point of the film, the reason on some level that it exists. It is an ode to the hustlers and the strivers, an argument that drive and moxie can overcome material deficits. If you will it, it is no dream.

But why is it Marty’s dream? How was the dream created in the first place? No time! Look, Marty is hustling someone again!

Marty eventually does get to a ping-pong championship in London, where he meets the married actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow). Stone’s husband is a successful businessman named Milton Rockwell. Rockwell is played by Kevin O’Leary—yes, “Mr. Wonderful” from Shark Tank. Why they used O’Leary when the world is full of great actors is a mystery. Marty and Kay begin an affair, which crumbles when he steals a necklace from her.

Marty also manages to get to Tokyo, where he plays champion Koto Endo, played by the real-life deaf ping-pong champion Koto Kawaguchi. Kawaguchi is a calm and believable presence in Marty Supreme. He’s got that Zen ability, so crucial when film acting, of being still on camera while Chalamet is zipping around from one self-made disaster to the next.

One thing that does work brilliantly in Marty Supreme is the music. In an interview, Director Safdie explained how the 1980s pop music works so well for a film set in the 1950s.

I’m no historian, but in my research, I saw in the ’80s [there was] this rebirth of the American Dream, in almost air quotes,” said Safdie. “I was just thinking, ‘OK, what was happening in the ’80s? The birth of postmodernism, the first era where they were redoing the ’50s,  literally in music and fashion, and you have [President] Reagan, who was trying to follow defeat by chasing the prosperity of victory.

Safdie filled his film with Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears, Alphaville, and Public Image Ltd. When New Order’s “The Perfect Kiss” is used over some of the action, the film takes off.

At one point during Marty Supreme, I had a flashback to another film. The field of green ping-pong tables, the fast-talking characters, the hustling, and the 1980s soundtrack all reminded me of something. It was The Color of Money, the 1986 film starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise and directed by Martin Scorsese.

In The Color of Money, a gifted pool prodigy named Vincent Lauria (Cruise) is discovered by “Fast Eddie” Felson (Newman). Vincent is exactly how Fast Eddie describes him, “a flake.” By making Vincent not only cocksure but also eccentric, goofy, and honorable, the film creates a memorable and even sympathetic character. It allows Newman’s Fast Eddie to be the one who is obsessed with hustling and money, and to show why he is a corrosive influence on Vincent, who is pure, joyful talent. Marty Supreme combines Eddie and Vincent into one slimy, reckless, and irresponsible cad. It’s a lot of flash at the expense of character, story, and the genuine and not contrived moral struggles that can come with chasing greatness.