Oh for captions or brief expository spurts of dialogue! Battle of the Sexes is about the famous inter-gender tennis match of 1973 between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. It's also about getting fair wages for professional female tennis players, King's gradual coming-out process, Bobbie Riggs' problems with family and gambling, and Howard Cosell's giant, invasive hands. Without captions or exposition, some characters never come into focus. For example, I have no idea who Sarah Silverman's sassy character was or what her official relationship to the women's tennis tour was.
The movie mostly tells but doesn't show such important things as King's current excellence and Riggs' past excellence on the court in the build-up to the match. Margaret Court might as well have a mustache to twirl as the anti-feminist side-villain of the piece. Bill Pullman plays some male chauvinist guy who runs something to do with women's tennis. What? No real idea. He's a promoter. Or maybe he's head of the North American Ladies' Lawn Tennis Association. Or maybe he's just reliable Bill Pullman!
We are shown a lot of King's burgeoning relationship with a female hairdresser in the lead-up to the match. This is a case of Hollywood Screenwriting 101 and its love of twinning a personal and public narrative. In reality, the (married) King had been seeing the woman in question for two years prior to the Battle of the Sexes. And the woman wasn't a hairdresser. She was King's personal assistant. And that same personal assistant sued King a few years later for 'Palimony' after their relationship ended.
The narrative streamlines this messy, human story into a tale of a saintly lesbian hairdresser, a saintly female tennis player, and a saintly, understanding husband for King. Hollywood turns everyone into either saints or sinners, it seems, in the slurry-making process of the 'biopic.' The upshot is that King and the hairdresser are too saintly to be interesting -- Steve Carrell and Sarah Silverman get all the fun lines and fun things to do. Riggs' long-suffering wife and long-suffering adult son are also saintly and sanitized.
The acting keeps things afloat despite the often deadly dull first hour and the relative lack of actual scenes of tennis-playing. Emma Stone is fine as King, and Steve Carrell is also fine as Bobby Riggs. As Billie Jean King's husband, Austin Stowell is a portrait of wounded decency. The last 40 minutes rescues the first 80, but just barely. Lightly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.