Battle of the Sexes

Before making a movie "based on a true story," filmmakers should consider whether their take seems likely to be more entertaining than their subject's Wikipedia page. If a Google search can spoil the ending, maybe another way of building suspense is required.

Thankfully, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) and husband-and-wife directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks) manage to make Battle of the Sexes, a movie about a famous made-for-TV tennis match, as weirdly engrossing (and guilt inducing) as the event was in 1973. It succeeds because it treats viewers to what television audiences didn't see when Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs faced each other. It turns out that having a man and a woman play each other meant more than a simple ratings ploy.

King (Emma Stone) had been dominating the women's tennis circuit only to discover that she was being paid a fraction of what male players were making even though she drew as many fans as they did. The "old boy" network led by Jack Kramer (a wonderfully smug Bill Pullman) refused to acknowledge that women could be exciting competitors but were happy to collect the proceeds from their labors.

She and other top female players, with the support of the combative entrepreneur Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman), form their own league and start to draw crowds of their own, but the women have to support their own league by selling tickets and preparing venues themselves. King is also going through personal turmoil; she has found a reprieve from her loveless marriages in the arms of her hairdresser Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough).

Meanwhile, 55-year-old Riggs (Steve Carell) has a cushy office job, a nice home and a severe case of boredom. No longer able to compete outside the senior circuit, he's constantly angling for a gimmick to get quick cash or attention. A compulsive gambler who has suckered his own psychiatrist into a few too many card games, Riggs lives for the hustle.

To return to the spotlight, he challenges King to a match. He means to demonstrate that the top-ranked woman in the world is no match for a male player, even one long past his prime.

In hindsight, that anyone took Riggs' challenge seriously seems dubious. King's 29 and trains constantly; he clowns around and takes quack supplements. His sexist taunts are belied by his practically being kept by his having married an heir to a business fortune (Elisabeth Shue) who provided him a cushy executive position in her family firm.

Carell gives Riggs a boyish charm that almost but not quite makes up for the vile things he says to his competitors. He lends the macho boaster a vulnerability that makes his contemptible and quixotic behavior seem oddly entertaining.

Similarly, Stone convincingly gives viewers the sense that she's carrying more than a mere game on her shoulders. Because King has gone through a slump, her victory against Riggs didn't seem so assured, and Stone also convincingly plays someone who feels affection for the decent man, Larry King, (Austin Stowell) she has married but can't love.

MovieStyle on 10/06/2017