Battle of the Sexes review: Emma Stone aces this crowd-pleasing tennis gender war

Directors: Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton. Cast: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Bill Pullman, Andrea Riseborough, Elisabeth Shue, Austin Stowell, Alan Cumming, Jessica McNamee. 12A cert, 121 mins

Watching male chauvinism get a drubbing will never not be good cinematic sport, and Battle of the Sexes gives us ringside seats. It resurrects the famous Houston Astrodome showdown in 1973, when 55-year-old Bobby Riggs challenged any female player to take him on, hoping to settle the matter of men’s superiority in tennis once and for all.

On Bobby’s side is the full, fusty weight of the tennis establishment, still arguing at that time for an absurd imbalance of pay – an eight-fold imbalance, even – between male and female champions. It took Billie Jean King, then 29, to shake up the system, threatening to boycott the US Open unless they remunerated equally, which they started doing that year. But not for another 28 years did another grand slam tournament follow suit.

This is to indicate the point of Battle of the Sexes, which – beyond being bubbly, crowd-pleasing entertainment which jollies along a treat – is to celebrate a battle being won but not a war. And it’s not only gender parity it has in mind.

Emma Stone and Steve Carell are absolutely the right stars for the occasion. Stone’s King is spirited, tenacious and lets flashes of rage out – Stone specialities, even in her lightest roles – when the bigotry of the era sticks in her craw. She’s not peddling an impersonation so much as simply putting the Stone we know and love in King’s shoes, but she’s got the footwork and empathy to make this approach succeed.

King starts out as the number one female player of the moment, but the film shows her hitting a rocky patch, when Australian rival Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) takes her on. Simon Beaufoy’s script dramatises Court’s homophobia as a psychological weapon: she has inklings of the affair between King and her hairdresser Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough), and hopes that a terror of discovery will throw her off her game. (Court is now a Pentecostal pastor in her native Perth, who has unsuccessfully opposed Australia’s gay marriage bill, so the film’s characterisation of her as the Wicked Witch of the West is not so far off the mark.)

Meanwhile, Riggs is all bluster and PT Barnum-ish stunts, donning ludicrous outfits to win rallies for show, or hitting back the ball with a frying pan. He’s a gambling addict, too, whose idea of getting help is to attend a meeting and tell everyone they’re simply bad card players, or to carry on a rolling blackjack game with his shrink.

It’s a well-calibrated Carell turn, pushed easily to caricature and served neatly to the baseline. Let’s face it: Steve Carell being seedy and overconfident in bad Seventies threads is a subgenre to relish almost every time. But watching him deflated and wheezing on the court – the comedy knocked out of him – is very much the necessary endgame. The movie can have only so much fun burlesquing this dinosaur’s patter (“I love women... in the bedroom and kitchen!”) before socking history at him right where it hurts.

The Little Miss Sunshine directing duo, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, give us a good time. The music helps: they have an unflagging, high-energy score from Nicholas Britell (Moonlight) on side to grease the wheels, cheerleading King whenever its hopeful main theme pipes up. And they allow nuance in when they’re trying.

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King’s husband Larry (Austin Stowell) remains disarmingly supportive even when he figures out she’s cheating on him, and has one testy scene warning Marilyn (who later sued King in real life, by the way) that both of them are sideshows next to King’s love of the game.

Perhaps a deeper interaction between the players could have beefed up Beaufoy’s script – they became good friends after the media circus died down, even though he begged for a rematch. King spoke to Riggs a day before his death in 1995 and talks of him as one of her heroes.

This shaded, rather sad, aftermath might be beyond the film’s purview – it’s glued, at the end of the day, to everything at stake in the face-off. And there’s no begrudging it that.