King Richard Review: A Transparent Attempt at Image Rehabilitation

When Venus Williams turned pro in 1994, her father and former coach, Richard Williams, garnered as many headlines as the 14-year-old tennis phenom. Richard, who trained his daughters and future legends Venus and Serena for years on a rundown tennis court in Compton, was widely admonished for being an arrogant, self-promoting loudmouth, impossible to deal with and far too outspoken about his issues with the tennis world. Despite the fact that his reputation wasn’t entirely undeserved, the coverage did reek of the sort of racist dog-whistling that frequently surfaces whenever black athletes break through in sports typically dominated by white people. But in confronting this prejudice, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard all too eagerly and haphazardly overcorrects.

Indeed, in pushing back against the image of Richard Williams (Will Smith) as nothing but a greedy narcissist, the film smooths out nearly all of the man’s rough edges. And despite acknowledging his almost superhuman obstinacy, King Richard frequently veers into shameless hagiography. By presenting his contentious dealings with the press, various managers and trainers, and even his mostly subservient wife, Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis), as all being solely in the interest of protecting his daughters, the film excuses, if not outright ignores, the questionable tactics he used to push them toward greatness.

For one, we get constant references to Richard’s master plan for Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena’s (Demi Singleton) future successes, which he outlined in a 78-page manifesto written before their birth no less. And the filmmakers use this as a means of propping Richard up as some sort of omniscient genius, rather than a man who, like many other parents of talented young athletes, simply believed in his kids and was fully invested in their future.

Even more ludicrous is the way that Zach Baylin’s script condescendingly plays with the audience’s knowledge that Richard’s predictions of his daughters’ accomplishments came to fruition. You could set your clock by the scenes in which people who, with good reason, stood up to Richard, or told him that he was going about things the wrong way, are mocked. What fools to even doubt that “king” Richard knew exactly what he was doing all along.

Whether it’s a social worker (Erin Cummings) who’s simply doing her job by responding to a call from a nosy neighbor who believes that Richard is training his girls too hard or esteemed tennis coaches Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn) and Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal) trying to help Venus get to the next level, Richard always thinks he knows better. And because of how things turned out in the end, King Richard assures us that he always did. This notion of predestined greatness is often baked into sports biopics, where the outcome is already known and all adversity is certain to be overcome. But rarely has a film used its foreknowledge of a happy ending as a reason to remain so uncritical and incurious of its central subject. As such, it’s no surprise to learn that Venus and Serena Williams are both executive producers of the film.

If the real-life Richard Williams is full of multitudes, you wouldn’t know it from King Richard, as it never delves into the disappointments and trauma that shadowed his life, such as his encounters with the Ku Klux Klan, which are only briefly mentioned. And while Smith captures flashes of Richard’s deep-seated pain, the actor is overly mannered and one-note in his depiction of the man’s cantankerousness. But Smith’s performance is just a symptom of the film’s central flaw: its sidestepping of the more unseemly aspects of Richard’s personal life and unwillingness to suggest any self-aggrandizement in his actions. In that sense, King Richard is ultimately less a biopic than an act of image rehabilitation.