2017 sports movie
Rating: 13/20
Plot: Former tennis great Bobby Riggs, desperate for attention, challenges #1 female player in the world and a woman who was not one of Michael Jackson's lovers to a tennis match. It's as classy as anybody would think it would be.
I was excited about this one even though I never understood what this whole tennis match proved. So Billie Jean King was able to beat a guy who was well past his prime? Rather than having any actual significance in a feminist sort of way, it just seems like it was nothing more than a goofy publicity stunt. The movie struggles with what to make of the whole ordeal, too. There's a clumsy mix of comedy and drama, and neither character's off-court issues--Riggs' addictions and marital troubles and King's experiments in lesbianism--aren't developed in a way that makes them real. In fact, King's lesbian relationship seems almost exploitative, like directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton--but probably especially Jonathan Dayton--just couldn't wait to have Emma Stone and Andrea Riseborough suck each other's faces.
Steve Carell is an actor whose name I'm never quite sure I'm spelling correctly. Two R's? Two L's? What's going on there? I questioned the career this guy would have after The Office, but he's got a little more versatility than I expected. This is a role he was born to play as he looks exactly like Bobby Riggs in end-credit photos. He's good enough here, but there's nothing in this character or script that really stretches him. Unless that's really him playing tennis in all these scenes because he does pull that off. Emma Stone looks just like Billie Jean King, too, and her performance is fine. I'm just not sure these characters have the combined charisma to carry this movie.
This tries to tack on the lesbian story and roaring females, but it just doesn't have the heft and just ends up an uneven though inoffensive look at this silly minor moment from the 1970s.
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