Battle of the Sexes (2017)

I love tennis...this movie is not about tennis. It is painful and boring. It is dreary and slow and even the tennis scenes are boring. Barely 2 stars

This movie is just about King's lesbian relationship with her hairdresser, not tennis. In fact, the tennis stuff feels like an after thought.

Well sure the movie was about women's rights. The movie description in imdb that described the movie should have also stated the movie was about promoting homosexuality. The movie was about how Billie Jean was the first athlete ever to come out.

Having just finished watching this film and having read some of the user reviews, I see as much confusion in the reviews as I did in the film. I will keep this short so will not regurgitate the "plot" but a huge gripe for me was Emma Stone being cast as BJK. I realise this film will be watched in the main by people who never saw her play, can't remember what she looked like or possibly have never heard of her - in which case they won't realise she was a mere 5'2", small and dumpy, nothing like the tall, athletic-looking Stone. Having been an avid tennis fan for 40 years, I found this jarring, especially as the tennis double used for Stone is a 5'10" player.So many people have praised her performance - why? It was nothing better than ordinary and she was surrounded by a bevy of women players who largely remained nameless and in the background (with the exception of Rosie Casals) even though they would have been names in their own right. So there's an own goal straight away in a film about women being sidelined, ignored and not taken seriously - let's do the same thing to them 45 years later when we tell the story! Oh my mistake, they do shine a rather nasty spotlight on Australian legend Margaret Court, but none of it in a complimentary light of course.I have seen reviews complaining that the sexism was cartoony and too overt, a sledgehammer rather than the "subtle" depiction one viewer would have preferred - apparently unaware that sexism back then was a way life, mainstream and considered acceptable in public, private and anywhere else. It's what BJK was fighting to change, remember? Another reviewer lamenting Alan Cumming's performance as an aide to the BJK team, not realising he was actually a celebrated dress designer that specialised in tennis wear and had dressed just about every women's champion over the course of 40 years.Films about sport are usually over-simplistic and clunky with a good ladling of sentimental hogwash and this is no different, except in this case we are supposed to cheer as wildly for the LBGTQ slant as we would had BJK just hit an ace in the film we thought we were watching. So what is this "battle of the sexes" actually about? The celebrated tennis match which BJK won (a best of FIVE sets, all you serial complainers about women who only play best of 3) or the behind the scenes capitulation of her husband in favour of the aggressively pursuing female lover?Bobby Riggs was certainly a character but there was not enough focus on him, although Steve Carell did well with what little he had, turning him from an out and out idiot into a real person with doubts and regrets as well as compulsions. His performance was good while Stone (with all the screen time) seemed to be in some cheap made for TV movie, far too tall with a rotten wig.I guess I hated it, all things considered. Something that should have been compelling was reduced to preachy saccharine nonsense but as another reviewer accurately stated - the SJWs will eat it up.