Timothée Chalamet fires himself to the front of another Oscar race with an exceptional turn as table tennis prodigy Marty Mauser, loosely based on a real star of the sport, Marty Reisman. It’s an absolute peach of a part in this characteristically pumped, exhilaratingly idiosyncratic comedy-drama from director Josh Safdie (who helmed the excellent Good Time and Uncut Gems with brother Benny). Appositely ping ponging from one catastrophe to the next, the film is set in the early 1950s and follows New Yorker Marty on his quest to become world champion.

Despite boasting ingenuity, talent and a seasoned hustler’s gift of the gab (‘I could sell shoes to an amputee,’ he boasts), Marty struggles to secure the money for international tournaments, with disaster (and cops) around every corner. On his adventures, Marty encounters retired movie star Kay Stone (a well-cast Gwyneth Paltrow), who despite her icy demeanour struggles to resist Marty’s charms, while his pregnant lover and childhood friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) is his sometime partner in crime. The likes of Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, Abel Ferrara and David Mamet appear in small roles.

Both a car-crash comedy of errors and a scathing takedown of the fallacy of social mobility, Marty Supreme is a riotously rocky rollercoaster that, despite its adrenaline-fuelled approach, is less stressful and more wacky that Safdie’s previous films. The wonderful, sometimes shamelessly anomalous soundtrack blends 50s tunes with 80s classics that lend it a stirring sports biopic feel, despite its often shabby, very unsporting settings. Best of all, it revolves around a spectacular, fantastically flawed protagonist who is extremely easy to root for. Chalamet is about to turn 30 and has had an astonishing rise to the top; as Marty, it feels like he’s already bagged the role of a lifetime.

Marty Supreme is in cinemas from Friday 26 December.