Aggrandizing Biopic King Richard Serves Tennis Patriarch an Uncritical Softball

King Richard is a movie about the ends justifying the means. It’s a movie about bootstraps and hard work and outsiders overcoming odds through persistence. It’s also one about cherry-picking, hypocrisy and smoothed edges. But it barrels through those parts. Doesn’t let them stick. As we learn, the movie is a lot like Richard that way. Its incurious approach to telling the making-of story behind two of history’s most dominant athletes, tennis titans Venus and Serena Williams going from Compton to Wimbledon, sadly fits the expectation when it comes to authorized biopics. Though director Reinaldo Marcus Green finds winning performances away from his lead, the milquetoast script serves the tennis patriarch a soft lob—one without potential to inspire or excite, and one that’s constantly reminding us that we already know how it ends.

It’s hard to generate too much lasting conflict around the young careers of Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) when their place in the record books is so firmly and recently established. It’s never a question of “Will this all work out?” no matter how many doubters or environmental obstacles screenwriter Zach Baylin puts in their father’s way. That there’s not much else to the film—no insight into the pair or their family, aside from the rah-rah Richard show—explains why it all feels so lifeless. At its core is Will Smith’s portrayal of Richard Williams, obsessive and confident father of Venus and Serena (as well as many others whose abilities apparently didn’t inspire him to create/devote his life to a meticulous plan for their careers), which is well-researched, consistent and feels as much like a costume as his tiny little ‘80s short-shorts.

Smith certainly isn’t bad, as his charm is best deployed with a heaping helping of feather-ruffling swagger, but because his character feels like it exists in a vacuum from relationships and (sometimes) reality, it always feels like it’s on a different plane than the rest of the film. This is part of the point. He’s supposed to be endearingly stubborn, but because everyone he’s around ranges from surprisingly amenable—douchey talent agents—to nearly saintlike—his long-suffering wife Brandy (Aunjanue Ellis)—he just comes off as an annoyance that the script shackles its characters from acknowledging, even subconsciously. This is a mistake. A pair of strong supporting coach performances (Tony Goldwyn, serious and strict; Jon Bernthal, a coke-and-mustache cartoon still able to pull off paternal concern) act alternatively as wholesome audience surrogates to Richard’s increasingly frustrating decisions and as idiot foils proving time and time again that his single-mindedness always, always pays off.

Because they’re so deeply linked to the careers of Venus and Serena, moving them to a different state or determining what tournaments they’ll take part in, these coaches are far deeper characters than the rest of the Williams family. The young actors, including the handful of other sisters, are all charismatic and at their best when they’re moving as a rambunctious herd. Galloping through the house or riffing in a stuffed car, the gaggle of siblings are as charming, chaotic and realistic as anything in the movie. Fittingly, they’re not given much attention. King Richard isn’t about the girls. They aren’t characters, but props for the Will Smith Oscar Machine, much as—it seems—they were props for Richard Williams’ ego. He’s the one who sacrifices everything for their practices. He’s the one getting beaten up by local thugs. Every incident is so dead-set on showing his hardship that when Venus and Serena actually take the court, you’re a little shocked it’s not Richard holding the racket, CGI’d into their place.

Standing out amidst the disappointing disinterest is Ellis, who’s fantastic in the few scenes she’s allowed space to act. In one of the strangest and least fitting scenes of the film, Brandy finally lets Richard have it for being such a myopic, credit-taking dick, with Ellis embodying dignity as emotions bubble over. The scene teases us mercilessly with dangled righteous comeuppance—an emotional catharsis that never comes. But Ellis even makes this disappointment work in her favor, as weariness slowly pries her indignation open into a bare-minimum embrace. That this scene leads to nothing, and ends with that half-assed hug, is indicative of a checked-over and approved script that feels even more dishonest by letting these toothless critiques immediately fade, its women too thinly drawn for such sustained or developed detail.