King Richard stars Will Smith as Richard Williams the father of Venus and Serena Williams 2 of the greatest Tennis champions of their generation save for maybe the Greatest of all Roger Federer but this movie documents their upbringing in Compton to eventually Venus competing in the Bank of the West tournament in 1994 at only 14 years of age.
King Richard is very enjoyable and a lot of that comes down the performances, Saniyya Sydney and Demi Singleton (daughter of the late great director John Singleton) are very good as the young Venus and Serena and really hold their own very well on screen, Jon Bernthal as Rick Macci deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Academy Awards as he is a delightful as Venus’s Florida based coach and soaks up every inch of screen time while Aunjanue Ellis is really good as Brandi Williams and she gets some key moments to come into her own as well.
Also I really liked seeing Erin Cummings from the John Campea show in a brief scene as well.
Plus the film has probably the best Tennis match depictions I’ve ever seen as the matches in this film are riveting to watch and done in such a way that makes Tennis look and feel more exciting than can often be the case when your watching real life matches on TV and the final match of the Bank of the West tournament in this movie is a terrific climax.
But I have to talk about Will Smith as Richard himself and he is okay but too often I kept thinking that he is doing an impersonation of Eddie Murphy and that kind of soft-ish type of voice Eddie can sometimes have and it got so distracting there was a part of me that started to wish Eddie had played this role instead of Will and I think he would’ve been wonderful in this role and Will does a good job don’t get me wrong.
And so that was King Richard and its really enjoyable and worth a watch on the big screen despite Smith’s performance not being that great at times, 3 and a half out of 5.
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