Battle Of The Sexes * * * * 1/2

     In 1973 Tennis player Billie Jean King took on Bobby Riggs in a Male v Female tennis match.  She soundly beat him. I’d always been under the impression it was a real grudge match.    

Emma and Steve as Billie and Bobby.
Gotta love 'em.

      Certainly she had something to prove but this film left me with a more informative and happier understanding of what happened.  The reenactment suggests it was mostly a lot of fun and full of good will. Any malice and infamy which surrounded this iconic tennis match had little to do with the players and more to do with others using it to promote their own political agenda.  

       Emma Stone plays Billie Jean King.  She has put a lot of work into it and it shows.  I’d have always thought her too light-framed for such a role, but she is very convincing, not just physically but in mannerisms and voice.

       Steve Carell is brilliant as the lovable scoundrel Bobby Riggs. He also looks remarkably like Riggs.

       The film covers more than the circus-type event of the big match. It shows the unfairness that the women players were treated with. Their earnings were one tenth of the male players but they were drawing the same size crowd. Billie Jean King and other women players responded by starting their own league.

        From the politics of the tennis circuit in the seventies, to the rising women's liberation movement, to gay-lib, like Billie Jean King herself on the court, Battle of the Sexes covers a lot of ground, and it’s very entertaining.

      Although the climax of this film is the big match I was just as much moved by the scenes showing  Billie Jean King's realisation that she was primarily same-sex attracted, an awakening she had with her hairdresser.  Their subtle interaction offers some of the most fully clothed erotic scenes I have seen in some time!