{"id":23869,"date":"2021-11-17T12:09:41","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T20:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=23869"},"modified":"2021-11-17T12:09:41","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T20:09:41","slug":"king-richard-showcases-the-williams-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=23869","title":{"rendered":"KING RICHARD Showcases the Williams Family"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This film will be playing at movie theaters on November\n19<sup>th<\/sup>, with a month-long simultaneous release on HBO Max.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/24_0008_B-merged.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10620\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Virtually everyone is familiar with phenoms Venus and Serena Williams, who have become two of the all-time greatest tennis players. Besides winning more titles and records than can be listed here, they\u2019re still competing at extraordinary levels. That hasn\u2019t prevented the pair, their family and filmmakers from producing a biopic about their lives. <em>King Richard<\/em> focuses primarily on their dad Richard and his efforts to make his daughters the best athletes in the world. The story is interesting and the film is slickly mounted, with strong performances from the cast. Yet, while it is a good feature, one can\u2019t help but feel that the family\u2019s close involvement in the production may have ultimately softened some of the edge and tension from the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/King-Richard-03-fixed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-23871\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Richard Williams (Will Smith) is a father determined to help\nhis children rise to the top. In particular, his attention is focused on teaching\ntennis to daughters Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton). Seeing\ntheir talent, he videotapes them and contacts professionals and special schools\nin their hometown of Los Angeles. Richard pressures everyone he meets to teach\nthem, despite most being less-than-interested in providing free help and\nlessons. Eventually, he convinces tennis coach Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn) to\nvolunteer time with Venus and re-teaches lessons with wife Oracene (Aunjanue\nEllis) to Serena. Both join the amateur circuit and draw attention. Richard\nthen begins negotiating with other coaches like Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal) as he\ncontinues to forge ahead and make his children rich and famous.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/King-Richard-01-fixed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-23872\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smith is giving his all, portraying Richard Williams as a\nfamily man and doing his best to make the dad\u2019s wild eccentricities\nunderstandable. Performers Sidney, Singleton are charismatic and fun to watch as\nthe Williams sisters, joking around jovially while working through intense\nconditions and scrutiny. And Ellis also has a couple of dramatic scenes as she\nattempts to help her driven husband listen to his girls and take their opinions\ninto consideration. The performers are all compelling and likable, as are the various\nsupporting cast members who find themselves both impressed with the young tennis\ntalent and frustrated by their father and his hard negotiating tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When the Williams sisters are shown playing the game, the\nediting and camera work is also impressive. Obviously, the end result of many\nof the matches depicted are already known, so making the various showdowns\nreasonably tense and exciting is an accomplishment in and of itself. And Smith\nalso adds some extra drama to the proceedings, behaving both in a confident but\nedgy manner during the matches.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/King-Richard-04-fixed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-23873\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In general, the film itself is handsome, but there is a\ncertain Hollywood glossiness to the proceedings. The movie itself makes a few\nminor allusions to Richard being stubborn in making everyone adhere to his\nvision. However, it doesn\u2019t result in much conflict within the family, beyond\none or two discussions with his wife. Family, carrying a humble attitude and\nhelping the community is explained as being essential to Richard, yet the movie\nonly mentions the charity work in passing and is instead focused on the dad negotiating\nbusiness deals and making big money. These are some interesting contradictions\nthat could provide drama, but the movie doesn\u2019t address them. It paints Richard\nas almost saintly and sets out to spurn any questions about his tough methods\nto ensure success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obviously, Richard Williams was in many ways instrumental in helping his daughters achieve success, but to some degree the focus on dad minimizes their tremendous talent and accomplishments of Venus and Serena. And given the real family\u2019s involvement in the proceedings, it does seem as if the upbeat family dynamic presented should be taken with a grain of salt. <em>King Richard<\/em> is an effective and inspirational tale of how two tennis phenoms came to be, but it doesn\u2019t quite deliver an ace serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This film will be playing at movie theaters on November 19th, with a month-long simultaneous release on HBO Max. Virtually everyone is familiar with phenoms Venus and Serena Williams, who have become two of the all-time greatest tennis players. Besides winning more titles and records than can be listed here, they\u2019re still competing at extraordinary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[206,2046,2789,5668,6251,11784,11785,11786,11787,17021,17624,18040,19715,23086,23721,24295],"class_list":["post-23869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-206","tag-aunjanue-ellis","tag-biopic","tag-demi-singleton","tag-drama","tag-king-richard","tag-king-richard-film-review","tag-king-richard-movie-review","tag-king-richard-review","tag-richard-williams","tag-saniyya-sidney","tag-serena-williams","tag-tennis","tag-tony-goldwyn","tag-venus-williams","tag-will-smith"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}