As one of my kids correctly stated when I said that I had watched this movie that with Emily Blunt and Steve Carrell it would have to be at least a decent movie. Throw on top of that the timing (it was set in the early 70's, in the midst of the attempt to pass an Equal Rights Amendment), so the past juxtaposed against the present (women still not paid equally, a body of largely male legislators determining what will be appropriate care for women, a president who admits to sexually assaulting women, and what happened just this month with Serena Williams, well, it may have been awhile ago, but not all that much has changed.
This chronicles the rise of women's tennis, which was a story that I did not know, and the much viewed tennis match between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs. He was a showman and a gambler who fanned the flames of sexism to grab attention while she was earnestly trying to carve out equal rights for women in tennis. After Margaret Court got bamboozled into playing him and lost, King felt that she had no choice (this jives with the story at the time), and the rest is history. It is a reasonable docudrama, with a better cast than script, but enjoyable.
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