Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena Williams (Demi Singleton) are the top tennis players in the history of the sport.  But before they became mavericks on the court and international icons, they started on the community courts of Compton under the carefully orchestrated tutelage of their father, Richard Williams (Will Smith).  In King Richard, we follow the humble beginnings of these two tennis stars, but more prominently, we learn about the dedication of the man that pushed them forward to be all that they can be.  

The inspirational sports biopic has a lot of ground to cover, and it tries to do it all which bogs the story down and results in a poorly paced and unnecessarily long 144-minute runtime.  Zach Baylin’s awards-vying script for Warner Brothers tries to cover way too many topics instead of synthesizing the story down to its core elements and director Reinaldo Marcus Green is unable to sort through it all in a clear – or more importantly – concise manner.  With the real-life sisters signing onto the film as executive producers, it is not meant at all as a slight to their history and upbringing, but on the page, King Richard would have benefited greatly by cutting down the first act and focusing more on their training under Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal). 

The film chooses not to, consciously, as it wants to serve more as a tribute to Richard Williams instead of focusing on Venus and Serena.  It is all well and good, but when you are telling a story so close in orbit to two household names, it needs to lean into it more, and the second half certainly strays from Richard to focus on Venus.  It is a bold move, especially when Richard, despite his clear devotion to his family, is still very bullheaded, prickly, and not exactly a character that we necessarily like to be around.  Unfortunately – for Smith at least, but fortunately for the audience – the second half of the film is far more interesting and enjoyable to watch. 

To Smith’s credit, he delivers a strong performance without any of his typical comedic antics.  He has some moments of humor, but he delivered those lines in a much more subdued manner and he expertly fills the role of a father that will stop at nothing to make sure his children are happy and successful – something that probably hits very close to home for the actor with two kids of his own in the business.  The troubling thing, however, is that film does not ever grapple with the concept of how much agency Venus and Serena had in their own success.  It was and is their talent and skill on the court, but in today’s day and age where helicopter parents and stage moms can run rampant, it is impossible to not shake the idea of were these kids really allowed to still be kids despite Richard’s numerous preachings.  The structure of the script is also troubling as it rewards much of the success of Venus on her father and largely ignores Serena regulating their contributions to the sport to a few frames of text to wrap up the film, and even there it ends on a note praising Richard. 

The other bit of unconventional, yet rewarding, casting is Jon Bernthal as another mentor figure for the girls.  He plays a very jovial role and is actually a decent guy even though his philosophy is more tournament-focused than Richard’s.  The film does not play him as a villain in the narrative which is a refreshing change of pace when compared to other entries in the genre. 

But the true stars of the film, despite what the framing will try to convince you of, are Sidney and Singleton as the sisters.  They have great chemistry together and the scenes they share emanate with a pure sisterly bond unlike anything in recent memory.  The film places a larger burden on Sidney as it is primarily focused on Venus’ initial rise to stardom, and she portrays great nuance, especially in the final tennis match.  The camera returns to her many times throughout that final sequence, and she conveys an incredible range of emotion which draws us back in for an emotional, though cliché in its delivery, ending. 

For all the film can boast in acting merits, the overall direction is very typical and rather stale.  Green opts to station his camera to capture very standard and still shots without much electricity behind them.  There is a little life brought into the frame during the tennis scenes in the latter half, but not nearly enough to break free from the rather boring style adopted by the scenes off the court.  This paint by numbers approach to framing is made even more apparent when Kris Bowers’ incredibly blunt and emotionally manipulative score comes in to try and add some feeling into what we are seeing.  The framing, the score, and the lighting seldom work together in the more meant-to-be impactful moments and it is in those same scenes the machinery at work becomes glaringly obvious instead of being transporting and enveloping us in the narrative. 

King Richard is clearly a very personal film but focusing on “the man that made them” is a wholly uninteresting angle into a story with more than enough cinematic value to it on its own accord.  The overlong biopic trots along without much gumption, and while it is perfectly positioned to be a holiday crowd-pleaser for the whole family given its toothless delivery, the bloated weight of the script is more than enough to lull viewers to sleep long before the tryptophan even has the time to kick in.