King Richard (12A)
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The early days of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams is the subject of King Richard, a lively, highly entertaining biopic of their ultra-focused father, Richard Williams, played here with a combination of grit and outsized charisma by an on-form Will Smith. For years Venus and Serena – who grew up in gang-plagued Compton – were the tennis world’s worst-kept secret, with Venus even popping up as a character in David Foster Wallace’s wilfully abstruse 1996 debut novel Infinite Jest, just two years after making her professional debut at 14. But that part of their journey is also dominated by Richard’s ironclad belief in not just his daughters’ talents, but his own ability to help them flourish, so it makes sense to examine their story through his.
That can present some problems, and director Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men) never quite resolves how to portray Venus and Serena (respectively played by Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton – both fantastic) as anything other than idealised teens who rarely push back against their parents. Through it all, though, Smith is good at digging beneath the surface of Richard’s bluster and showmanship as he negotiates a sport rife with racism, classism and exploitation, not to mention a socio-economic system that won’t tolerate people like him messing up.
General release