Battle of the Sexes (2017)

BATTLE OF THE SEXES  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
    Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough,
    Sarah Silverman, Elisabeth Shue, Natalie Morales,
    Jessica McNamee, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming,
    Fred Armison, Austin Stowell, Jamey Sheridan 
The most wildly hyped tennis match in history took place in the Houston Astrodome on September 20, 1973, between the fiercely competitive women's champion Billie Jean King and a grandstanding hustler (and long-ago men's champion), Bobby Riggs. King was 29 at the time. Riggs was 55. The match was to some extent a circus - Riggs' participation guaranteed that - but it was also a high-stakes gamble for King, who hadn't just staked her own reputation on the outcome, but the integrity of the newly formed Women's Tennis Association and at least symbolically the women's movement as a whole. I'm not sure I would've picked Emma Stone to play King till I saw this. After watching it, I'm not sure I'd want anybody else. She finds a vulnerability in King that King herself, publicly at least, never let anybody see. Steve Carell is more one-dimensional as Riggs, a crass con artist and tireless show-off with a serious gambling addiction, but that's more a reflection on Riggs than Carell, and physically Carell is practically a clone of the guy. King's sexual orientation figures into the story - she was married at the time and embarking on a relationship with another woman - as does her role in the founding of the WTA. But the main event is the match with Riggs, complete with an archived Howard Cosell and a television audience of 90 million, most of them rooting for Billie Jean. For what she did, when she did it, for her tenacity on the court and her grace in the glare of the spotlight, King was one of the more heroic sports figures of the 20th century. Sometimes greatness comes in glasses and a tennis dress.