A King Is Crowned?

Plenty of movie fans don't much care about what gets nominated for the Oscars. But I do often try to watch all the Best Picture nominees before the awards are handed out. I'm not always successful in that, and it usually has to do with whether I've been able to get a jump on watching "sure-fire contenders" before the nominations.

With the hazy goal in mind to "collect them all" this year, I watched King Richard, the biopic of tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams, and of their father, who always had a "plan" for their success. Will Smith is thought to be a sure thing for Best Actor here, while the movie itself is expected to be a Best Picture contender.

I certainly wanted to like the movie more than I did. But I should stipulate at the outset that I'm not "widely read" when it comes to sports movies. I'm certainly not the ideal audience here. I'm even less the target for a tennis movie; I don't think I've ever watched a tennis match other than channel surfing by one. I did know Venus and Serena Williams, at least, and how superlatives run short in describing their skill at the sport.

Because they are so good, I suspect that it might not be possible to make a broadly compelling narrative out of their story. The typical sports movie model, in my limited experience, tracks the highs and lows of a person/team. They struggle, they persevere, and finally they triumph. King Richard is almost nothing but triumph. Watching it, I got no sense of what skills are required to play tennis, no real sense of what made these two young up-and-comers especially good at it, and little sense that it was hard at all for anyone to see their success coming.

Of course, race and class were obstacles for the Williams sisters, and the movie does show that. But the enormous unwavering faith of their father Richard mitigates any feeling of struggle there. The first half hour in particular paints a picture of how unlikely it is for a tennis great (much less two) to come from Compton. But Richard the character makes their destiny seem like such a given that, when combined with the knowledge of how the real life story ended, it all just seems effortless. That surely can't be the truth.

So in the end, I walk away with no more understanding of Venus and Serena Williams, or their father, than I had coming into the movie. Just the same nebulous respect of an uneducated non-spectator that I had before. I don't think the movie told me anything I didn't already know. And basically, I didn't know anything.

I'd give King Richard a C-. I feel like any award love bestowed upon the film would be in acknowledgment of the real life subjects, or for Will Smith and his long career. But all of them have more award worthy achievements on their resumes than this.