[yasr_overall_rating]
The true story of the 1973 tennis match between World number one Billie Jean King and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs.
I often think movies like this, historical dramas, are limited by their source material. To go wildly off script would prove irresponsible to history, but sometimes everything surrounding your big event is just plain boring. I always want just a little more in terms of stakes, extra character development, and dramatic timing. This movie exemplifies the limits of making a movie on historical events, having to bend and twist a bit to eke drama out of something only slightly dramatic.
I love Steve Carell and Emma Stone. I enjoy their work, but this one did not shine for me. It’s not that they weren’t trying hard, but that the material did not lend itself to keeping me interested. Instead, I wanted to follow the stories of Sarah Silverman’s cigarette chain-smoking sports agent, or Margaret Court’s VERY short rise and fall at the hands of Bobby Riggs (let’s be honest she’s the real villain in this film.) A character as brazenly sexist and overdramatic as Bobby Riggs simply did not earn any sympathy points from me, no matter how often we saw his marriage and personal life suffer form his gambling addiction, and everyone around Billie Jean exists to prop her up.
You know that scene in football movies? Where the team comes out (usually to some ACDC track) and you feel the excitement? “Battle of the Sexes” manages that feeling for tennis. I don’t envy directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris the task of filming tennis, especially when the game lasts well over seven matches. There’s only so much hitting and grunting and watching people react we can stomach before we get the idea, and they craft a mini-narrative within the game itself. Billie Jean starts up, Bobby’s down, he makes a comeback, they fight. The centerpiece of the movie is their best part. I gloated in the pure schadenfreude of the historic match.
People watching this movie might recognize a sentiment today that resurfaces every time a male says something sexist. It exists in the political sphere of the ’70s so it narrowly escapes sounding controversial. Let’s be honest though: sexism is sexism so any film where a woman beats a sexist pig carries importance to us today. I like to think of this film as the Ally, a film that wants to help oppressed people by speaking out, but by virtue of being in the majority cannot just step up and yell on others’ behalves. It’s unfair to the oppressed. Instead, it uses the ’70s era real-life example to illustrate its thoughts on the subject.
It’s endearing, shines in certain moments, but overall, did not leave a strong impression on me. Horribly overscored, music dominates the film as if the filmmakers just told their editor, “don’t worry, we’ll put dramatic music over this to help make it sound better,” and then ended up putting music over everything. Instead of exploring the depths of a story I did not know, it only showed me the limits of making a movie on a historical subject. It’s a solid DVD rental but not a theater experience. Not one bit.
In theaters Friday, September 29th
