OVP: King Richard (2021)

Film: King Richard (2021)

Stars: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn, Jon Bernthal

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actor-Will Smith*, Supporting Actress-Aunjanue Ellis, Original Screenplay, Original Song-"Be Alive," Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Having watched 20+ Oscar seasons from beginning to end, I know how certain films will play.  It becomes clear based on the way a studio is positioning a picture or the way it's being marketed, the stars involved and the studio's slate that year which films are being pushed toward Oscar glory and which movies are going to have to work hard for that honor.  King Richard quickly showed itself to be an obvious contender for Will Smith.  Despite some initial questions about whether Smith was the appropriate casting choice, that has been put to rest in the weeks since King Richard first came out, as Smith not only seems assured a nomination, but given his A-list celebrity (one of the few indisputable, scandal-free industry "movie stars" who doesn't have his own gold statue) & the picture's positive reception, this feels about as strong of a lock to win Best Actor as you can get the week after Thanksgiving.  But, the question becomes-is the movie any good (Oscar isn't always as concerned about that question)?  Let's take a look.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, despite a long run time, doesn't feel particularly tedious and moves briskly through the adult life of Richard Williams (Smith) as he moves to make his daughters Serena (Singleton) and Venus (Sidney) into two of the greatest tennis players of all-time.  A lot of the movie is focused on Williams' unconventional approach to his daughter's future.  Living in a violent Compton neighborhood while continually strapped-for-cash, Williams has an uphill battle to try to get into the predominantly white world of competitive tennis.  He achieves that through a combination of luck, skill, and people being genuinely impressed with his daughters' insane tennis ability.  We see them coached first by Paul Cohen (Goldwyn), whom Richard eventually drops once it becomes clear that he wants his daughters to have a traditional education (rather than having them go through the normal juniors competition), and then by Rick Macci (Bernthal), who at the time had just launched Jennifer Capriati into tennis superstardom.  The film ends with Venus Williams' spectacular debut at the Oakland Best of the West Classic tournament, where she lost but still managed to take a set from Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, who that year would take the French & US Open and just months later would become World No. 1 for Women's tennis (i.e. Venus Williams was clearly a superstar in the making).

The film is a strange conundrum.  I genuinely enjoy watching tennis, and while I'm not as well-practiced in following it now as I would've been a few years back (when my favorites started to skip tournaments, so did I), I know a lot of the backstory of the Williams sisters, two of American athletics all-time great champions.  Smith is solid in the lead role, playing a bit against-type (though not entirely-there is a bit of the loose, cool persona that has made Smith a household name the past thirty years), and never understating (even when it might be uncomfortable for the audience) the truly racist institutions that Richard Williams had to break down to give his daughters, now arguably the definitive names in their sport, even a chance at getting through the door.

But the problem with King Richard is that it it is far too glossy.  Obviously the Williams sisters are still alive, but so is Richard and his (now ex)-wife Oracene Price, and making biopics of living figures is always a touchy subject, particularly when those figures are involved with the production of the film because it always feels too one-sided.  Richard Williams in the film is always right, and somehow knows everything that will happen in the future, which feels a bit two-dimensional even for a prescient man.  It's not necessary to always imbue a film with realism and to keep to the facts (I'm fine with cutting out parts of a biopic in service to a film), but he's played like a superhero here, and it feels a bit of a loss for a much better film that might have tackled some of Williams' more complicated personal biography (his fraught relationships with his other children, his divorce from Price for a much younger woman) which is basically ignored save for one giant speech which felt more inclined to ensure that Aunjanue Ellis would get an Oscar nomination alongside Smith rather than to help the story.  That they introduce this aspect of Richard's life/marriage and then just ignore it...it makes for sloppy filmmaking, and the kind of movie that wants to have its cake & eat it too.  It's probably going to be a serious contender for the Oscars this season, but it's a pity that it couldn't have found a way to uplift while also feeling authentic to the stories of two pioneering athletes.