I just saw Wimbledon, starring Paul Bettany as Peter Colt, a tennis player in his thirties who is trying to come to terms with being near the end of his career, having been ranked eleventh some years before, but now ranked 119th. It's a fine British romantic comedy with a deft light touch, involving two championship tennis players. It's a fine British sports movie about two tennis players who meet at Wimbledon and fall in love, complicating their tennis play. Take your pick -- but it's both, and (for once) both types of movie blend together very well, with neither being shorted. This is a movie that is much finer than its trailers.
I love the romantic comedy story, with the movie's careful attention to not letting it get soppy or sentimentally overdone, taking care to undercut such incipient tendencies before they can run away with the film, yet leaving us with both the romance and the comedy. The script is excellent; we are at once drawn in and want to see what will happen, on the court and off. Most important: Paul Bettany, a fine dramatic actor, is unexpectedly delightful as a romantic comedy lead, and you really, really want to know what will happen next! A single game lost at Wimbledon is a total defeat: a loss eliminates a competitor from further play. With life imitating art in odd ways in the film, the stakes are nicely high, the plot is not predictable, and the leading man is capable and modest, funny and self deprecating -- in short, perfect.
As a movie about championship tennis players at Wimbledon, the the film succeeds in pleasing both those who don't follow or know much about tennis -- I'm one of those -- and those who do, including some top world-class tennis players. John McEnroe and Chris Evert play two television commentators on the matches we see, and other tennis stars have cameos as interviewers or appear as the opponents in the segments showing actual tennis play. And expert tennis eyes have scrutinized the tennis scenes to make sure they show us neither more nor less than they should. Excellent job all around.
Kirsten Dunst is convincing as a brash young American player, and Sam Neil is her American father, American not only in his accent but his body language. The magnificent Bernard Hill and an ensemble of superb actors play Peter Colt's family. Watch this film, please. You'll be glad you did.
4:38:22 PM 
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