My Review of "King Richard"

King Richard is a biographical movie that came out in 2021. It's based on the real life story of Richard Williams, the father of famous tennis superstars, Venus and Serena Williams. I've heard tidbits about how people liked this movie but then again biographical movies are usually good.

I also thought it was quite weird that they would focus on the father. After all the queens of tennis were the two tennis superstars that had won all the accolades throughout the years. As I continued to watch the movie I had a better understanding of why they focused on his story.

The movie starts off in the 80's when Venus and Serena are really young kids. Richard is going to tennis clubs to promote the talents of his 2 daughters. He's not well off and he's looking for someone with good tennis coaching abilities to coach his two daughters for free.

I know that already sees like an audacious thing to do because all parents think their kids are going to be superstars at whatever they do. There's something different about Richard though. He knows for a fact his daughters will become superstars. They just need a little help to push them to the top.

Obviously no one initially takes him up on his offer. Instead he and his wife will continue to train their daughters the best they can through day and night. Even the neighbors think it's quite excessive. Richard is looked at as an overbearing father that is trying to live through his daughters and I guess a bit crazy.

All this of course is going to change because we all know how the story goes for the Williams sisters. That portion of the story is quite predictable but the way they got to that point in the early process of the careers is quite engaging.

Their family lives modestly in a bad neighborhood. You see that this family has gone through a lot in order to raise all of their kids. There are like 4 other sisters in the family too.

I really liked how they chose not to depict Richard as a perfect person. He has a whole slew of flaws but there is reasoning behind his flaws. This is where they get pretty deep in this movie.

Richard had grown up through a time when racism was rampant. He was never able to defend himself and no one would help him out. Throughout his life he's always thought that nobody had respected him. This went down through generations as his father probably went through even worse situations than him.

He doesn't want to be like his father and so he wants to make sure that his daughters are properly protected. In doing so he will have to make a few questionable things throughout this movie. This balance of right and wrong is continually tilted in your head from one side to the other. Everyone in the family has a part in this struggle.

What I was kind of curious about was the lives of the other Williams sisters that didn't get any light in the movie. Maybe they felt like they were discounted because the emphasis was always on their other siblings. Then again if they did that the whole movie would have been over bloated.

This movie finds all the right emotional chords without it feeling too cheesy. I thought that there was a nice balance of inspiring moments with the storytelling. Biographical movies sometimes teeter on being a little too cheesy but they did a great job with this one and the whole cast did a great job as well.

Overall, I really liked this movie. It was a very pleasant surprise because I didn't have high hopes for it when I turned it on. I was just curious to see how it would be. Thank goodness I gave it a watch. I have to give this movie an 8.5 out of 10. This is a movie that I will surely recommend to my friends and family to watch. I hope you get a chance to check it out as well.