Push for a win
KING RICHARD Cert
12A ★★★ In cinemas now
There’s a lot of Oscar buzz around this drama about Venus and Serena Williams’ trainer father, Richard. After all, Will Smith has been nominated twice before and the Academy has soft spots for polished biopics and inspirational stories about American icons.
Then again, I’m not sure how well a pushy tennis dad fits into the mould of the inspirational sports movie.
“I wrote me a 78-page plan for their careers before they were born,” says Smith’s Richard in the opening scene. This creepy line, culled from one of Richard’s many press interviews, seems to set up a meaty role that honours the film’s Shakespearean title. Sadly, that darker character keeps getting pushed to the sidelines.
If you weren’t aware that the film was made with the family’s approval (Venus and Serena are credited as executive producers), you’d sense something was off with the suspiciously positive portrayal of him.
But this very watchable movie charts an all-american success story as a good-humoured security guard tries to drag his family out of poverty by drilling his curiously uncomplaining youngest daughters (played winningly by Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton) on the scratty public courts of Compton in California.
Beatings from local thugs and knockbacks from professional trainers never dent his enthusiasm. Through sheer force of personality, he wins them places in the Florida tennis academy run by trainer Rick Macci ( Jon Bernthal).
Smith smashes what he’s served but director Reinaldo Marcus Green never knows quite what to do with the more troubling aspects of his hero’s personality.
In a brief but jarring argument with wife Brandi (an excellent Aunjanue Ellis), we learn that he abandoned his children from a previous relationship.
And, in another short scene, a social worker visits after a neighbour reports he’s working the girls too hard. These are glimpses of a more balanced and far more interesting story. Sadly, that tale isn’t in the remit of the authorised biopic and the rousing underdog drama.
The director never knows what to do with troubling aspects of his hero