‘Battle of the Sexes’ was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and stars Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs. This is about the 1973 tennis match between these two players, which ended up being the most watched televised sports event of all time. Since some inequalities inherent in tennis have been unsatisfying Billie, she applies for a match to Bobby Riggs, who used to be the World No.1 player but is addicted to gambling to earn money and bring back his reputation, in order to win women’s rights in tennis and make it equal. However, off court, each was having some more personal problems: marriage, sexuality, gambling and etc...
Although I am not a big fan of tennis, just enjoy watching some matches on TV, this movie was quite enjoyable for me and the fact that this match between these two players became the most watched sport of all really intrigued me, wish I could go back to that year to see the match in Live...that’s what I thought when I was watching this movie. Though the match, which can be seen nearly at the end of the film is a main thing for this film, I guess that problems related to the match which each was struggling to deal with off court were mostly making up this entire story. Cos they were also as primary as the match for all of us to know even though we are not having that sort of issues. So everything in this film was fortunately really important and very much fun to see in some respects. One thing which might be a flaw to this film for some people is that the final match between Billie and Bobby was shorter than expected and probably better be a bit longer. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that it was boring. Maybe you all can predict which player ended up winning that match though.
I was kinda excited to see Steve Carell and Emma Stone’s performances in this film cos both received Golden Globe nominations for their work. Surprisingly, both were so identical to the real players that I couldn’t really tell which photos were of the real players. You’ll be definitely amazed how similar they were to the real ones. But it was pretty tough for me to see Emma Stone struggling to come to terms with her sexuality and kissing the hairdresser cos had never seen her playing such a role in any films starring her before. Great job though. Steve Carell was as always exuberant and cracking jokes all the time and it made me wonder a bit if Bobby Riggs was really that kind of person as Steve Carell performed. Very curious to know that. Anyway, all in all, most things in this film were fantastic and intriguing to me. As I said, even though you have no idea about tennis or what these two players did, it’ll be alright and probably can enjoy it as much as I did unless you dislike these actors.
Thank you for reading my brief review of ‘Battle of the Sexes’!
