Review of King Richard, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green

It would be kind of impossible not to know about King Richard, especially considering the debacle that happened on live television at the Academy Awards with Will Smith.

I remember how the memes were all over the Internet at the time, and if I wanted to escape from what was circulating around social media, I would have to unplug completely.

As an entertainment journalist and critic, our Slack even was popping as soon as the televisions cut to not show was Will Smith was doing.

Anyways, it took me a bit after that to end up watching King Richard. I have no interest in tennis what so ever, so the tennis angle and the fact I knew nothing about the Williams sisters turned me off of the movie for a hot minute.

But recently I was scrolling through Max in search of something new to watch, and somehow landed on watching King Richard because I was curious about what the movie had to offer.

That said, let’s get into the review!

The story of the Williams sisters’ father, Richard, and how he helped them get to where they are today.

Set in Compton, California, King Richard begins in the early days of Venus and Serena Williams’ childhoods. Their father, Richard, and mother, Brandy, live together with the girls and their stepsisters in Compton, and one day, Richard decides that Venus and Serena are going to become professional tennis players.

As it turns out, he’s been planning for this moment his entire life, but Brandy and Richard are also working full-time while trying to teach the girls tennis on their own.

Richard wants to get them a professional coach, but he needs to find the perfect one. Enter: Paul Cohen. Paul doesn’t want to take the girls on as mentees initially, but Richard persuades them to just watch them practice.

Then, he realizes the girls have immense talent and agrees to take them on, but that leads to a new problem: the family can’t afford to get professional coaching. So Paul refuses to do it for free, and decides he will coach just Venus.

Not long after, Venus is in the junior level tournaments and is smashign that ball to success.

Richard keeps telling the kids they need to remember where they came from, and, unknown to him, Serena signs up for the same tournaments as her sister. She also does really well at the higher level, which leads to more problems, as the family is a Black one trying to navigate a predominantly wealthy white sport, and people are sticking their noses up in the air.

Richard decides to start looking at agents for high daughter, but when he starts thinking his girls will get taken advantage of, he decides to withdraw them from the tournaments, pissing Paul off and forcing Richard to fire Paul.

After Rick Macci sees the girls play, eh wants to take them into his coaching, and the family moves to Florida to give them at opportunity. Richard demands that the girls will not play in the junior tournament, and they will go to school and train instead. Rick questions this throughout the years, and Venus tells him that she wants to go pro.

This puts a strain on her relationship with her father, despite him agreeing to it, and after a tournament in Oakland, a Nike executive wants to give Venus a $3 million sponsorship. The family declines after conferring with each other, as they believe brighter things are in the future.

Venus has her first professional match. And although she doesn’t do well at first, she eventually overcomes her opponent and beats her. An underdog in the tournament, Venus loses her next match against the top seed, but put up a good fight along the way. As they prepare to leave the venue, a bunch of fans are waiting for them and Rick informs Richard that the shoe companies are clamboring to meet with Venus now.

Overall Thoughts

This is a standard sports biopic, but I can see why Will Smith won the Oscar for this. He does really well in his role as Richard Williams, putting on one of his best performances in a hot minute.

That said, I found this to be an interesting biopic to watch after reading about Althea Gibson, who was the first Black woman to get big in tennis, as I was comparing and contrasting the attitudes of the period she was playing in (a heavily segregated 1950s) with the opportunities the Williams sisters were given as children decades later.

It was a reminder of the small steps forward we have made. Go read the biography of Althea Gibson if you want to learn more—she was one of the first athletes to break the color line. I’m happy I watched King Richard, although I probably will not be revisiting it anytime soon.

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