If Battle of the Sexes had been released ten or even five years ago, it might have felt far more significant. However, in 2017, the message of the film feels behind the curve and frustratingly simple.
Written and directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (Little Miss Sunshine), Battle of the Sexes tells the story that led to the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.
The match put issues of gender and pay discrimination front and center for the world to see and became the most watched televised sports event of all time. It also took place at a time when Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs were both in the midst of tumultuous personal struggles.
There is no doubt that the story behind this famed tennis match is rich with dramatic tension, but the film’s approach to depicting it feels disappointingly reductive. As the central characters in the film, Bobby Riggs (Steve Carrell) and Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) are natural enemies and, as such, the movie posits them as ideological opponents.
In doing so, however, the film strips away some of the more complicated nuance from the characters, thereby limiting the depth and resonance of the story. In the end, Riggs and King are reduced to vehicles for articulating two sides of the gender pay discrimination.
In order to show both Riggs and King’s different perspectives on the issues of the film, the movie cuts back and forth between their two plots leading up to the match.
Unfortunately, the scenes with Bobby Riggs struggling with his gambling addiction and marriage contribute very little to the movie as a whole. His plot achieves little more than to establish a superficial argument for why women are inferior, therefore undeserving of equal pay.
However, here is the film’s fundamental flaw: Battle of the Sexes deems it necessary to depict both sides of an issue that should only have one side. The whole concept of having a “battle of the sexes” so that a woman can prove herself worthy of equal pay is wrong.
Pay equality should be an essential truth, not a point that is up for debate or competition. Rather than point out the absurdity of the match, the movie validates it. Instead of emphasizing the irrational mindset that allows such opinions to perpetuate over time, The Battle of the Sexes treats pay equal pay as an issue that’s worthy of enthusiastic debate. In the process, the movie becomes a part of the very circus it seeks to criticize.
Moreover, the movie becomes a fairly one-dimensional portrayal of both a complicated issue and a compelling woman. Billie Jean King, one of the preeminent female tennis players at the time and a founder of the Women’s Tennis Association, left a significant impact on both the world of tennis and women’s sports, not to mention culture as a whole.
Unfortunately, the film is so constrained by the limits it sets for itself that the political message feels superficial at best. A single tennis match ends up ruining what might have been a captivating biography about Billie Jean King.
A far more interesting movie would have dared to ignore the fanaticism and fervor surrounding the match itself and focused on the work King did off the court. Battle of the Sexes rushes through these elements of King’s life, drawing broad strokes that only serve to contribute to the superficial nature of the movie’s message.
As a whole, Battle of the Sexes is not a bad movie. Emma Stone’s charm and performance as Billie Jean King is enough to buoy the film. Overall, it’s the kind of movie that will play well on HBO a year from now.
But the film’s political message is already feels outdated. It’s shallow and entirely lacking in the kind of self-awareness that would make the story worth telling in 2017. Rather than use Billie Jean King’s story as a way of advancing a compelling commentary on gender politics, Battle of the Sexes settles for being another run-of-the-mill biopic that fails to rise above its unfortunately bland message.
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