Tennis player Peter Cort’s (Paul Bettany) career is on the wane; his serves are far from scorching, and his returns are missing their mark. But a lucky wild-card entry into the most prestigious tournament of all, Wimbledon, just may be his last hurrah. Love finds him off-court when he falls for tempestuous American athlete Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst). Can Peter chart this new course, or will he lose his way once more?

I just watched Wimbledon. The movie lacked any real depth although stars, Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst managed to shine despite the thinly constructed romance. The movie would have been much better if the reason for Dunst’s character’s attraction to Bettany had been presented earlier. In fact, most of the script’s attention seemed to focus on developing Bettany’s character with very little attention given to Dunst’s character. Nevertheless, it’s a good video rental but I’m glad I didn’t waste money at the movie theatres ($16,831,505 U.S. Box Office Gross) on this one.

From IMDB:

• Scenes for the film were filmed during the Wimbledon tournament 2003. The actors would walk out on court at the beginning or end of a match as though they were really competing. The officials and spectators were actual tennis officials and spectators, rather than extras. It is the only time in the history of the tournament that this has been allowed.
• Getting the actors to play professional-looking tennis proved much more difficult than anticipated. Eventually, it was decided to film them performing the strokes and digitally add the ball afterwards.