Mark Reviews Movies: KING RICHARD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 19, 2021

Perspective isn't everything in storytelling, but at times, it certainly seems as if perspective is the only that matters. Take King Richard, which, despite the title, is ultimately about the rise of future tennis star Venus Williams, while her younger sister Serena, also a tennis star in the making, waits for her turn.

It's not really about the athletes, though, because, as the title suggests, this story is told and seen from the perspective of the then-girls' father Richard. In a movie that's actually about Venus and/or Serena, their father, with his tough ways of training his daughters and what seems like a compulsion to control everything about their lives, might have been the antagonist—or, at least, a constant concern and occasional obstacle—in the story of the girls' desire to make their lives and their careers their own.

Richard, as played by Will Smith in this often inspiring but fundamentally uncertain biography, is a lot to take. He is stubborn, controlling, and overflowing with ego. More to the point, Richard sometimes—to put it mildly—doesn't seem to care what his soon-to-be-famous daughters, wife, and other children want for themselves or from him.

Since Zach Baylin's screenplay focuses on Richard, though, he's the hero here—not demanding but complicated, not obstinate but misunderstood, not overbearing but a man with a plan that, as we know from the real-world results of this movie's future, is going to pay off for both of his aspiring daughters. The movie addresses Richard's flaws, for sure, but the results are meant to speak much louder than any of the minor, mild, and quickly forgotten criticism leveled in his direction.

There are many other potential perspectives in this movie, and each of them would almost certainly tell a different story. We're thinking about those stories—Venus (Saniyya Sidney) finding the strength to stand strong, Serena (Demi Singleton) standing in her older sister's shadow, the girls' mother Brandy (Aunjanue Ellis) standing by her husband, if only because of her own belief in her daughters—as Richard's own unfolds.

To be sure, Richard is intriguing as a loving and supportive father, even if and because we start to wonder if his love isn't actually for what his daughters' success might get for him and if the extremes of his support might be detrimental. If Baylin and director Reinaldo Marcus Green confronted those apparent contradictions and presented Richard with even a fraction of the tough honesty on which the character prides himself, his story might have been able to stand on its own. Here, Richard needs his daughters, beyond whatever dreams he has for them. On a fundamental level of storytelling, this character needs Venus and Serena for his story to matter.

Here, we follow Richard as he coaches a 10-year-old Venus and 9-year-old Serena whenever their school and his night job allow, on a neglected tennis court in Compton. Most of the narrative is dutiful in terms of the girls' training and move toward a career in tennis, but the primary focus is on Richard's hard work (spending his days with his daughters and his nights working as a security guard), his persistence in finding Venus and Serena professional coaching, and his grand plan, which was cooked up even before either of the girls was born.

The challenges include gangs in the neighborhood, a lot of skepticism from those professional coaches, and tournaments for kids where everyone silently or quietly judges the presence of Black family among their ranks. Upon finding a home for the girls at the Florida training facility of Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), the biggest challenge becomes the pressure to let Venus, who's seen as the more promising and talented of the two sister, go the traditional route toward becoming a professional. That isn't part of Richard's plan, even though it's what Venus actually wants, and more importantly, he wants his daughters to have an actual childhood outside of tennis. Oddly, we never really see that other life, so we just have to take the movie's word that it exists.

A lot of this story comes down to a matter of implicit trust, really. We have to trust Richard's sincerity, even though he's also presented as a man looking out for his own interests, too. We have to trust his support, even though Brandy points out how he doesn't acknowledge her role in the family, ignores his other children, and barely listens to Venus and Serena. We have to trust his plan, even though it's Venus going against that plan that puts her in a position to see the end result finally come closer to being achieved (The Big Match here begins with a couple of moments that seem to be passing the narrative over to Venus, which would make a significant statement about Richard's sincerity and support as a matter of storytelling, but that doesn't last).

That we do, to some extent, trust this character is thanks in large part to Smith's performance, which cuts through the character's flaws and gives us a sense of the genuineness beneath Richard's tough, unyielding, and inflated exterior. King Richard seems to go out of its way to smooth the character's obvious edges, which seems like an unnecessary task—especially when there are two or three other perspectives here that could done the same job.

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