King Richard has always existed in abstract. You will have probably heard that Will Smith is in a film about Venus and Serena Williams, that he plays their father, and that the movie is more about him than it is about the world’s most famous sisters. But it’s less likely that you’ve actually seen King Richard. It’s a film first eclipsed by the concurrent release of Smith’s skin-crawlingly intimate memoir, then by headlines about what a financial disaster it was at the box office. Such dismissal couldn’t have happened to a less deserving film: King Richard is far more complex than it first lets on, and is also buoyed by charm and affability. Smith, too, more than deserves his probable Best Actor win.
He plays Richard Williams, a tennis coach and security guard who always sensed that at least one of his daughters would be a sports sensation. Scratch that. He willed it to happen, guiding – through almost obsessive, drill-sergeant levels of conviction – young Venus and subsequently her little sister Serena to professional glory, as if God had whispered a vision of their futures in his ear. Actually, wait. A tennis player said on TV that she was earning $47,000 (£35,000) a tournament, perking Richard up and leading him to write a 78-page plan outlining the entire careers of his then unborn daughters.
