Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Battle of the Sexes Blu-ray Movie Review

Billie Jean's not his lover.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 4, 2018

This may sound just a bit on the snarky side, for which I apologize, but I’m a guy and probably one of the last persons I would want to represent my gender in any way, shape or form would be Bobby Riggs. While Riggs’ achievements in tennis are still incredibly impressive, he wasn’t exactly the paradigm of how we tend to think of our athlete superstars, being kind of a nerdy looking guy, pretty short and with a bit of a paunch by the time he “enlisted” in the so-called Battle of the Sexes in 1973. Now to be fair, by 1973 Riggs was already in retirement and probably couldn’t have cared less is he wasn’t exactly a matinee idol (something he probably wasn’t even in his heyday), but the whole attempt to “prove” that women’s tennis playing was inherently inferior to that of males doesn’t exactly posit Riggs as a paradigm of evolved thinking. But here’s the thing about Riggs, especially as he’s portrayed by Steve Carell in the often boisterous Battle of the Sexes — he was in on “the joke”, making male chauvinist pig-ism something along the lines of performance art. In fact, Riggs’ whole approach to skirmishing with women tennis players was a “head fake” (if I may be permitted to mix sports metaphors), one crafted intentionally to put Riggs in the spotlight (and to possibly pay off some gambling debts, though that part of this screenplay’s formulation has been disputed by some). Battle of the Sexes of course revolves around the now infamous matchup between Riggs and Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), but it’s really more of a social critique about attitudes and gender roles, with some broadsides lobbed at our supposed progress over the past few decades.

One of the more commendable things about general attitudes surrounding sexuality that I’ve personally seen develop (and which I’ve discussed with my sons) is the wonderful (in my estimation) new tolerance that those exploring so-called “alternative lifestyles” are afforded, something that is distinctly different than the era in which I grew up (the era portrayed in this film, in fact). Battle of the Sexes may purport to be about a tennis match, but it really tends to find its emotional resonance in its exploration of some of the personal issues that Riggs and (especially) King were facing in the early seventies. In a way, there’s a somewhat uneven amount of attention given to these supposed combatants, with King coming out the winner in ways completely divorced from her eventual triumph on the tennis court.

The whole somewhat constricted cultural ambience of the early seventies is ably documented in the screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, where ostensible “progress” revolving around women’s rights is summed up by the tagline “you’ve come a long way, baby”, which of course centered around females’ “right” to give themselves cancer with their own “personalized” cigarette. But the clearly disdainful dismissal and almost forced subjugation of women tennis players by men in power will certainly refract meaningfully for contemporary audiences caught up in the whole #metoo movement (though there aren’t any outright issues with sexual harassment at play). But playing out against the burgeoning efforts of the Women’s Liberation movement (as exemplified by King and her attempts to form a Women’s Tennis Association) is King’s own struggles with her sexuality. She’s married to Larry King (not “that” one, portrayed by Austin Stowell), but she begins a not very well hidden affair with her hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), a situation which in those days could have easily led to the end of her career.

In one of those synchronicities that sometimes accrue as I wend myself through my review queue, I just had to revisit Moonlight for its newish 4K UHD release, and I was struck by the fact that as much as (to quote a certain therapeutic mantra) “things get better”, or to phrase it more appropriately, have gotten better, in other ways they’ve stayed depressingly the same, in terms of society’s acceptance of those with differing sexual preferences. But one of the things Battle of the Sexes does in a rather surprisingly breezy way is to address the whole aspect of coming to terms with how one feels about either the opposite or indeed the same sex, in a way that isn’t really that materially different in content (if admittedly drastically different in style) than some of Moonlight’s underlying plot dynamics. There's a bit more of a "traditional" villain in this film than in Moonlight, with the apparently homophobic Margaret Court (Jessie McNamee) filling the "nemesis" shoes in more ways than one. (Evidently the real life Court is quite active in fighting LGBT advances, something that some may find surprising in our supposedly "enlightened" age.)

Battle of the Sexes provides a field day for Carell and Stone in these iconic roles (I wouldn't be overly surprised to see either or both squeak in an Academy Award nomination despite the release's relative failure at the box office), but the film is stuffed full of nice turns by a gaggle of supporting players which includes Sarah Silverman, Fred Armisen, Bill Pullman and Alan Cumming (among many others). The seventies era production design is also a highlight (or lowlight, depending on your design sensibility).

The fact that the real emotional pull of this film is King’s own internal struggle makes me wonder if Battle of the Sexes might have been framed more successfully as a depiction of King’s emerging sexuality, with the whole Riggs thing playing out in the background. That’s more or less what ends up happening anyway, but there’s a feeling at times that the screenplay wants to have its cake and eat it, too, offering both an intimate personal story as well as a larger “meta” element that may seem inconsistently served (sorry) here.

Battle of the Sexes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Battle of the Sexes is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, along with cinematographer Linus Sandgren, gave this production an appropriately "old school" 1970s ambience by shooting on film (with an eventual 2K DI). That gives this transfer a nicely thick, somewhat textured look, with a nicely resolved grain field throughout, but a lot of this presentation tends to be on the soft side, with a kind of odd prevalence of rather dimly lit scenes (even some of the outdoor material doesn't look overly bright). That tends to keep fine detail levels from really popping some of the time, though when lighting conditions allow and close-ups are employed, things perk up considerably, with elements like flyaway hair on Sarah Silverman's bouffant being easily visible. The palette isn't overly vivid a lot of the time, something that actually only helps individual things like Riggs' bright yellow Sugar Daddy jacket pop all the more by contrast. There are no issues with image instability and no compression anomalies of any note.

Battle of the Sexes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Battle of the Sexes features a nicely rendered DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track, one that delivers the expected surround activity in the showdown scenes (many of which occur later in the film), but which also provides good immersion in several crowded scenes in places like locker rooms or press conferences. Dialogue, score and effects are all knit together expertly with smart prioritization. Fidelity is excellent throughout, and dynamic range is rather wide for a film that tends to be on the comedic side.

Battle of the Sexes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Raw Footage: Billie Jean's Grand Entrance (No Audio) (1080p; 2:17)


• Reigniting the Rivalry (1080p; 18:52) is an okay EPK with some decent interviews.


• Billie Jean King: In Her Own Words (1080p; 10:30) is for my money one of the best supplements on this disc, with a great interview with King where she discusses what she was going through during the time period of the film.


• Galleries

  Unit Photography Gallery (1080p; 2:05)

  Set Design Gallery (1080p; 1:45)

  Note: Both galleries offer either Manual Advance or Auto Advance options. The timings are for the Auto Advance options.

Battle of the Sexes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is another kind of almost whimsical treatment of a rather serious subject from Dayton and Faris, who brought much the same sensibility to Little Miss Sunshine. Performances are uniformly wonderful throughout this feature, even if its focus seems unnecessarily split between King's emerging sexuality and the whole anarchic tennis match with Riggs. Technical merits are generally strong, and Battle of the Sexes comes Recommended.