84% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Are a fan of the actual Battle of the Sexes;
Are okay with the film not 100% concentrating on the actual battle of the sexes;
Are a fan of Billie Jean King
Based on the true story of the 1973 tennis match between female tennis star Billie Jean King and retired self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs in what was deemed a 'Battle of the Sexes' match to determine the worth of women's tennis.
I went and saw this movie because I had nothing better to do, but I wasn't too keen on it to begin with. It ended up being interesting because I never knew anything about this event, but to be honest the film itself wasn't the best, and I'm not actually sure how I stand on it. I expected there to be a lot more focus on the match and the sexism, but a lot of it seemed to be more on Billie Jean King's personal life.
So as I said, most of this film is about Billie Jean King's personal life, particularly her love life. It seemed like the actual match event wasn't substantial enough to make a whole 2 hour movie, so they filled it with a lot of filler, such as Billie Jean's life, and even Bobby Rigg's life. This was a bit weird, because it seemed like they were trying to bring across this message about LGBT people while also bringing us a message about equality, and both messages seemed only halfway there. In the end this made it seem like the movie did not have a clear direction and it was a bit all over the place.
It was interesting seeing the characters, though. Emma Stone did a good job and she'll probably be nominated just because the Academy likes her and this is based on a true story and has an important message (all things that the Academy drools over), but I will be extremely surprised and utterly disappointed if she wins.
I love how Steve Carrell has been doing more serious roles. I was really impressed with him in Foxcatcher (2014), and even though his role in this film is more of a caricature it's still interesting to see him in a serious film.
His character was a bit weird though. As I said, I don't know much of the event, but it was weird to see Riggs say all that chauvinistic stuff. I get that he was just saying it for show because he really wanted to make the match more exciting, and I think they heavily implied that he wasn't actually a chauvinist, but it was still weird. It must have been terrible being a female tennis player at that time and hearing him say all those terrible things all over the news.
I thought it was interesting how they set up the sports organisers and the entire system as the antagonist, though. I can't ever see Bill Pullman without thinking of the President from Independence Day (1996) or the father from Casper (1995), but he plays the sports organiser here and it was interesting to see how he truly believed that female tennis was unworthy, even if it sold the same amount of tickets as the men's tennis.
As to the rest of the characters' stories, the stories about Billie Jean's husband and lover was interesting but as I said I think they focused a bit too much on that, and they didn't really enforce many of their messages, so it felt a bit weak. It was interesting to see how Larry King (not the talk show host) handled it all, and man, he truly was such a nice guy! I felt really sorry for his character and even though the movie had a happy ending, it was still sad to see him go through that.
I wasn't a big fan of the directing. The camera was handheld most of the times and as a result a lot of scenes were really shaky and weird. They also spent a really long time on some parts, particularly with Billie Jean and her lover, and this made the film seem really long and a bit dragged out. I guess it was to look like it was a part of the film's time, but I was not a fan.
Overall, this film isn't memorable. I'm not sure how tennis fans would react to this movie, but for me I found it slow and lacking any direction. It was interesting to see the values of the time but it was not interesting enough for me to feel deeply moved by anything that happened.
A few side notes:
- I found it so weird every time she got a haircut, especially when she just got the haircut right before the match? Did that honestly happen???
- I want Alan Cumming to play Willy Wonka now. Or someone terribly evil. I don't know.
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