King Richard.

Will Smith is already receiving Oscar buzz for his performance as Richard Williams in King Richard, currently streaming on HBO Max, in which he gives Venus and Serena Williams’ father a more three-dimensional depiction than he’s received in extensive media coverage before this. It’s the kind of performance – playing a real person while convincingly mimicking their voice and mannerisms – that tends to win awards, but the film itself is far more well-rounded and nuanced than recent Oscar bait like Judy or Bohemian Rhapsody were.

Richard Williams (Smith) is the father of Venus and Serena Williams, and decided before the girls were even born that he would raise them to become world-class tennis players, writing out a plan with the help of his wife, Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis), who also worked extensively with them to help them improve as players. They lived in Compton, and as Black players in the extremely white tennis world, faced racial and socioeconomic discrimination, with coach after coach declining to work with the girls or hear Richard’s (possibly crazy) requests for funding for a tennis academy. He does eventually coax Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn) into taking them on, but Richard’s plans for his girls – including emphasizing their development as people, not just athletes – clash first with Cohen’s plans and later those of legendary coach Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who pays for the entire family to move to Florida as part of the deal to train both Venus and Serena. Richard pulls them from the junior circuit, against the advise and wishes of Macci, driving him towards a conflict with Venus, who sees this as a sign that her father doesn’t believe in her, which gives the film its one real story arc and allows for the resolution when she re-enters the competitive sphere by turning pro.

The film, with a script written by Wilmington native Zach Baylin, starts when the girls are preteens and Richard is trying to find a coach willing to train them, and takes us up through a 14-year-old Venus Williams facing then-#1 ranked Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario (who is probably going to jail soon for fraud and tax evasion). That allows Baylin to show us Williams’ persona as more than just the stage dad from hell, hinting at his actual flaws while centering his love and concern for his daughters, and still leaving room for Oracene, whose role is often diminished or erased from the Williams sisters’ legend. We’re seldom without Richard on screen, but he is also counterbalanced by other strong personalities – Oracene, Cohen, Macci – who at least prove different perspectives and often push back against his monomania, once or twice giving him the shadow of a doubt about his plans.

King Richard is still a showcase for Smith, though, and he answers the challenge with something more than just an impersonation. The voice, lisp, and slight hunch are all true to the actual Richard Williams, but Smith gives Richard an emotional depth that is beyond mere mimicry. The movie can’t work if you don’t buy him as a loving father who’s wildly overconfident in himself and his plans, rather than the crazy, overbearing father of the media narrative when Venus and Serena first emerged on the national scene. He also has to show weakness when his plans don’t quite work – although that’s infrequent in this script – and when his wife confronts him multiple times, including an argument about his infidelities, which only scratch the surface of some of his worst behaviors. Smith maintains the veneer of confidence while hinting at some inner vulnerabilities, which Oracene exposes in that argument scene, which also gives Ellis one of her strongest moments in the script. Indeed, one of this film’s greatest strengths is the room it gives Ellis to make Oracene a three-dimensional character who is a major part of the girls’ personal and professional growth. The two young actresses who play the Williams sisters themselves, Demi Singleton and Saniyaa Sydney, both had to learn to play tennis for their roles, and the hours of work paid off, as they look more than passable in numerous scenes on the court, helping the film avoid the common pitfall of sports movies that get the sports stuff wrong.

It’s a crowd-pleaser of a film, but does so without becoming saccharin, or excessively revising history – we could hear more of the more unsavory parts of Richard’s history, certainly, but at least his infidelities made the cut – and the choice to end the film with a match Venus lost was a sharp one, because one thing the film lacks is much drama on the court. The sisters crush all opposition on their way to Venus turning pro, which doesn’t make for great cinema on its own, and including that loss – which still rankles her – at least allows the narrative to turn on a different point than the obvious point that they were just better than everyone they played. Smith deserves the awards buzz he’s getting, but Baylin’s choices, from adhering to the true story to not pandering to the audience, made this film work for me.