I think you just might have the next Michael Jordan.
No, brother, I got the next two Michael Jordans.
This movie takes a different perspective than you might expect on the story of Venus & Serena Williams, certainly two of the greatest athletes to ever perform on the world stage. It’s an origin story, but it puts the sisters firmly in supporting roles and puts its focus on their father, Richard Williams, played by Will Smith, who is certainly trying very, very hard to be excellent and is not entirely failing. Unfortunately, this basic premise is about the last surprising thing this movie will do. It is really and truly not a bad movie, it’s just also not particularly good. It’s fine.
The performances are probably the movie’s biggest strength. The script is not great, but some of the cast breathe life into their characters. I’ll get to Smith in a second, but first a shout out to his supporting cast. Aunjanue Ellis is predictably really good as Brandy Williams, the mother of the Williams sisters; she’s getting all the nominations on the strength, I suspect, of one scene in particular, where she finally really lets her husband have it. Probably the most fun performance for me was Jon Bernthal, cast very against type as an optimistic, affable tennis coach, all smiles and goofy accent. The accent wasn’t great, but it was just so different from anything I’ve seen Bernthal do before that I enjoyed it. And Tony Goldwyn is great as a high-powered coach that Richard Williams clashes with. Honestly, I thought Smith was at his best in some of those scenes, where he’s really sparking off of Goldwyn’s performance.
And Smith is good here. I don’t really agree with the people saying this is his best performance. I’ve been thinking about his dramatic career a lot in the aftermath of seeing King Richard and I think his best dramatic performance really is I Am Legend, a movie I don’t exactly love, though it is better than King Richard by a pretty good margin. His performance here is variable. In some scenes he’s leaning more into the mannerisms and body language than in others, but he does have some nice emotional beats. And I have to say that this is the first Will Smith performance where Will Smith himself kind of disappeared at times for me. There are moments where you’re looking at him on screen and he isn’t just, you know, obviously Will Smith. And that’s kind of remarkable for a guy with as strong a screen presence as he has.
But the character is doing him no favors. Richard himself is very inconsistently written, I think. He spends about the first thirty minutes just wildly talking up his daughters to everyone who will listen and then, quite suddenly, it becomes very important that they be humble and he spends two scenes just pounding away at them about being humble and then that ten minutes is over and so he’s back to telling them that they’re the best in the world and the humility thing just never comes up again. And there’s a completely weird subplot in the movie where . . . and this is going to sound insane to you if you haven’t seen the movie, but I swear it’s true, there’s a subplot where Richard plans a murder. Like a premeditated murder. He’s just going to murder someone. And he is, in fact, only prevented from doing it by pure chance. Like he’s literally with the guy with a gun in his hand and like ten seconds away from gunning this guy down. I have no idea if this is based on a true incident or not; I mean, if it is true, I cannot understand for a second what Richard’s motivation is in sharing it. He’s the only one who would know about this. But either way, even if it is true, it’s just ludicrously out of place in what is otherwise a feel-good sports/family movie and I’m honestly shocked that more people are not talking about this element of the film. Why is this here?
In fact, why is a lot of this movie here? You probably remember that I said one of Belfast’s saving graces was that it’s only a hair over an hour-and-a-half. Well, this movie is just a hair under TWO-and-a-half hours. And it’s so scattershot that there’s one-hundred percent a lot you could cut and tighten the movie up a lot. The direction is just, you know, fine, if unimaginative. And imaginative direction is something I kind of expect from a sports movie; there’s just an opportunity to really do interesting things in filming the sporting events. But the tennis matches in this movie are just not really exciting or engaging. You’re distant from the action a lot, a spectator; I think this is because the perspective character is Richard, who is, after all, watching the games from the stands. But the movie never puts you on the court with Venus or Serena and so the matches have no real intensity. You never feel like you’re there.
Anyway, all in all, this isn’t a terrible movie, though I’ve spent most of my time talking about the negatives. But that’s really because the positives are just not that interesting. Like the movie looks pretty good; it’s technically sound; the performances are mostly good most of the time. It functions as a movie (and, in a year where Don’t Look Up got nominated for Best Picture, this is not a small thing). It’s watchable. It’s just . . . bland and middle-of-the-road and not really worthy of any awards attention at all, I would say, except for probably Aunjanue Ellis. I wish it was better; I feel like Venus and Serena deserved better. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – mostly rote movie brings nothing new or interesting to the sports element of the film or to the intrinsically interesting story; the performances are good, but the script is inconsistent. 2 ½ stars.