Directed by: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Starring: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough, Austin Stowell, Bill Pullman, Sarah Silverman, Alan Cumming, Jessica McNamee, Elisabeth Shue
Battle of the Sexes is an enjoyable sports comedy which doesn't transcend into greatness. It captures its time, place, and early 1970s national mood on gender equality splendidly, but you aren't likely to discover much more about Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs than you knew already. King (Stone) was the closeted tennis pioneer who formed her own tennis association when it became clear the male-dominated tennis industry wasn't prepared to offer females equal prize money. She is married to the near-saintly Larry (Stowell), who knows tennis is Billie's great love and also knows of her lesbian relationship with hairdresser Marilyn (Riseborough), while dismissing it as a phase.
Riggs (Carell) is a 55-year-old former tennis great working at a token office job for his rich father-in-law. He is a gambling addict who reluctantly attends Gamblers Anonymous meetings and plays poker with his enabling shrink. His wife Priscilla (Shue) is exasperated with his inability to quit gambling. Bobby is a bombastic showman always looking for one more way to stay relevant and score a big payday. In the middle of the night, he calls Billie and challenges her to a tennis match. Billie rejects the offer, which is soon accepted by Billie's rival and world number one Margaret Court (McNamee), who is thrashed by Riggs in embarrassing fashion on the court.
The stage is soon set for King vs. Riggs in a winner-take-all spectacle to take place at the Houston Astrodome, where Billie hopes to shut Riggs up once and for all. Their training styles could not be more opposite. Billie trains like she is trying to win the Wimbledon final. Bobby clowns around, takes performance-enhancing drugs, and yucks it up for the media. He is having the time of his life, while Billie feels the weight of the world on her shoulders. Bobby, even at middle age and years past his playing prime, does not take Billie seriously because she is, after all, "just a woman."
If one of the two main players is examined with any sort of depth, it's King, played winningly by Emma Stone as a woman who is it all together on the tennis court while her private life is one of confusion and potential controversy. She loves Marilyn, but also knows if word surfaced of their affair it could potentially ruin her and the fledgling association she helped create. It would be many years before King admits to being gay. She is already behind the eight ball professionally being a woman in a supposedly male-dominated sports world.
The Riggs we see, brilliantly played by Steve Carell, is not unlike the clown prince of tennis we had already seen before in archive footage. He is always "on" and we never get to see who is inside. Did he actually believe in the chauvinistic, openly sexist rhetoric he spewed while promoting the match? Was he simply playing a cartoonish villain? If he didn't believe it, how did he reconcile his private emotions with his public persona? We won't know by watching this film, but Carell is fun to watch. The movie probably takes dramatic license by having Priscilla kick him out and without a word of explanation have her show up at the match looking for reconciliation. Did Riggs' behavior convince her in some way that he was an ok husband after all?
Battle of the Sexes paints in broad strokes. We witness a time not long ago in which a sports league President openly espouses sexist views which are seconded and enabled by other males in the sports world, including Howard Cosell, who called the match on television. King courageously opened the door for female athletes to further their equality and then went on to beat Riggs for good measure. As for Riggs, he became more famous for this one match than he ever did during his playing days. It came as a surprise to my movie going companion that Riggs used to be tennis player at all.
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