Will Smith’s underdog movie about Serena and Venus Williams’ dad is his best performance to date and is as much a story about parenting as sporting achievement
Let’s be honest, King Richard is nowhere near being a favourite for best picture. Some would even suggest an unpretentious sports biopic like this doesn’t even belong at the awards top table. But isn’t that what they said about Venus and Serena Williams? King Richard is an underdog movie about underdogs, and if the notion of the lowly outsider overcoming daunting odds sounds too Hollywood to swallow, well tough: this actually happened.
Richard Williams’ story is absurdly improbable, on the face of it: a working-class Black man from Compton, Los Angeles, who decides he is going to coach his two daughters to become world-beating tennis players before they are even born, and writes an 85-page plan for how to achieve it. Needless to say, the pro tennis world laughs in his face. “You’re asking me to believe you have the next two Mozarts living in your house.” But of course, Williams does achieve his goal, and if the conclusion of this story is not exactly a cliffhanger, King Richard at least departs from the standard “everything depends on the big game” sports-movie formula, and gets into the psychology of this unique family.