“King Richard” is a strange and conflicting beast. It’s a film that finds a language to render powerful compositions of courts as colosseums of unfathomable expectations. It’s also an incredibly patronising, mischaracterised portrait of its subject and the landscape of race in America. Right at its centre is Will Smith offering perhaps the worst performance of his career.
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and written by screenwriting newcomer Zach Baylin, “King Richard” is the rose-coloured, revisionist history of the uncompromising force, Richard Williams, the obsessive sporting Dad behind the most remarkable tennis family in the history of the sport.
Setting the scene in the cultural lightning rod of Compton, Los Angeles in the 1990s, tennis fanatic Richard (Will Smith) has been grooming his daughters Venus (played with buoyant composure by Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (played with simmering determination by Demi Singleton), since birth for a singular purpose; greatness. Battling limited resources, gang violence and meddling neighbours, Richard Williams will stop at nothing to see his daughters fulfil his grand design.
Let’s start this game with the aces. Finding a way to capture tennis genuinely in the film is no mean feat. Tennis is a sport that has a broadcast language all of its own. Coverage of tennis has been evolving and innovating to the stage that match directors commentate with “frankenbites” by injecting super slow-motion reaction shots from the competitors between games and even points.
Green and his cinematographer Robert Elswit collapse the distance between the audience and the competitors – taking us one impossible step closer to the action and emphasising the speed of the shots and the strange way that distances feel farther lunging for the ball.
Saniyya Sidney nails the bright, unquenchable belief in Venus Williams. Demi Singleton, too, strikes the perfect balance between the supportive and suppressed power of Serena Williams. Both Sidney and Singleton do terrific work on the court to make the tennis convincing, and the film would fail without it.
Aunjanue Ellis is the foundation of “King Richard” as Oracene ‘Brandy’ Williams. With Smith strutting through the film, at best a caricature of the subject, Ellis maintains the emotional reality of the matriarch that stabilises Richard’s uncompromising rollercoaster behaviour. The ways that she chooses to play judo with each impulsive decision creates a haven for her daughters (three in addition to Venus and Serena). When she finally reveals how she feels, Smith is forced to bring his A-game.
I do not know what the consistently terrific Jon Bernthal is doing as Rick Macci – coach extraordinaire of the Williams sisters – but man, oh man, could I watch him do it all day. The hair, the moustache you could set your watch to, the shortest of shorts; the usually intense Bernthal is bursting with raw enthusiasm and encouragement. But, of course, the longer he’s associated with Williams, the more he faces the dejection of goalposts being moved; butthurt Bernthal is a fragile joy to behold.
This is where the momentum shifts. Baylin’s script – a Blacklist discovery – was initially conceived of without the endorsement or collaboration of the Williams family, but evolved into one with their blessing and producer credits.
It’s clear that a figure such as Richard Williams almost demands re-examination. Williams built a near-mythical reputation for his daughters’ ability and potential long before they found their way onto the professional circuit.
The patronising media discourse consistently positioned him as a side-show buffoon, the implication that this overconfident underprivileged black man could not possibly know anything about the sport of tennis to groom not one but TWO powerhouses, once in a generation, players. The greatest shame with “King Richard” is that the film reinforces the impulsive, reactionary impression of the man in many ways.
In “King Richard”, Green and Baylin, despite the extremely heated racially radicalised context, position that the primary foes to the Williams’ success are the community conflict in and around Compton. The film uses nosey neighbours as tactical distractions and gangland figures that pressure the Williams family to points of contrived and deeply irresponsible life trajectory altering moments. The hostile class contrasts between the Williams family and their budding sponsorship/management suitors feel more civil when screaming alarms of exploitation.
Finally, Will Smith’s central performance as Richard Williams is one of the most embarrassing of his career. From the moment he’s on-screen, sounding like Adam Sandler’s Bobby “The Waterboy” Boucher, you realise that this is the kind of performance that a director like Michael Mann feared.
For “Ali”, Smith’s most transformative and transcendent performance reaped the benefits of an imposed method preparation. Eleven months of physical and dialect training had Smith talking to his children as the “greatest of all time.” Smith isn’t embodying Richard Williams. Instead, it is a two and a half hour unintentional “Saturday Night Live” cosplay that simplifies what is ultimately a profoundly ambivalent character. In the gracious, über talented, and titanic champion status of his daughters Venus and Serena, it’s evident that Williams method – however mad – got results.
“King Richard” is to Richard Williams what “Bohemian Rhapsody” was to Freddie Mercury. The biopic is dead, but that won’t stop the feature-length, cosplay desecration.
