Film Review: “King Richard”

Game, set, and match: Smith serves up winning performance in Williams biopic

Richard Williams (Will Smith) coaches his daughters Serena (Demi Singleton, l.) and Venus (Saniyya Sidney).

The last based-on-real-life tennis move I reviewed was Battle of the Sexes back in 2017, a jaunty yet powerful look at the infamous 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Just as that movie was about so much more than solely tennis, so too is King Richard, a film that takes place nearly 20 years later, and, while ostensibly about the early lives of tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams, is actually about race, class, parenting, and marriage. But the picture features plenty of nail-biting tennis matches, too, for the true tennis aficionado.

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