Movie Review - Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes ***½ (out of 5) (PG-13) Those of us old enough to remember the highly-publicized 1973 tennis matches between Bobby Riggs and the top two professional women will find this dramedy treatment of those lives and times highly entertaining...as were the events when they unfolded. Younger viewers may be surprised by how drastically our culture has changed in the subsequent decades, or how mesmerized and polarized the whole country (and beyond) became in response.

Nixon was in the White House. Vietnam was winding down, but still a sore spot. Feminism was beginning in the face of rabid resistance. Free agency for athletes hadn’t arrived, and none were making the Big Bucks yet to come n any sport. Female tennis pros were only earning a small fraction of the prize money men won in the same tournaments. Riggs (Steve Carell) had enjoyed a stellar career, but at 55 was reduced to low-level jobs and hustling tennis bets on the side. He was the P.T. Barnum of the sport, betting on himself with handicaps like handling dogs or working around chairs on his side of the court.

When Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and a group of other aggrieved, underpaid pros bucked the Old Boy network and formed their own tour group, Riggs saw a chance to return to the spotlight. He challenged King to a match that would prove even an over-the-hill guy could trounce the best of the women. King said no, but Australia’s Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee, also from Down Under) - her closest rival - accepted. Riggs won handily, forcing King to pick up the gauntlet for the sake of her gender. At stake was not only a relatively enormous payday for the televised showdown, but legitimacy for all female athletes, and equity for all women in all aspects of life. Not that it should have been so important. It just seemed as if it were.

Carell’s performance and Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay give us considerable insight into the consummate, albeit rather desperate, showman that was Riggs at that stage of his life. We get a good look at the media frenzy he created with outrageous comments and stunts, decades before social media existed to fan the flames. The film reminds me how torn I was back then between enjoying the unprecedented wall-to-wall media circus Riggs was serving, while rooting for the women on principle.

The other social topic that has shifted dramatically is King’s discovering her sexual identity when she’s drawn to a woman despite being happily married to a very loving, supportive gent. The need for absolute secrecy was crucial at the time. No way a lesbian could bear the standard for her cause in the 1970s, despite the so-called sexual revolution of the ‘60s. Sponsors and supporters would have shoved her out to sea on a raft in search of Amelia Earhart. Figuratively speaking.

The film covers all the bases adeptly, though one might have preferred less time on the affair and more on the bigger pictures of tennis and women’s struggle for fairness in all phases of daily living. All the principals shine in their roles, particularly Stone who resembles Ms. King more than most would have expected. Overall, the production masterfully combines the humor, heart and weight of the depicted chapter in our ongoing social evolution. (9/29/17)