It's the 1973 "The Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King (Holly Hunter) and Bobby Riggs (Ron Silver). This concentrates mostly on the year before the iconic match. Billie Jean had never been lady-like and her parents forced her to play tennis instead of playing sports with the boys. She tries to set up a ladies tour and fight for equal pay to the men. She organizes the ladies but number one player Margaret Court (Jacqueline McKenzie) is not cooperating. Bobby is a degenerate gambler and a loudmouth hustler. He keeps challenging Billie Jean to play for the new women's lib movement. Margaret accepts the payday and quickly loses. Billie Jean is forced to accept for the honor of the women's game.This is a perfectly TV movie and there is poetic justice with the original being an iconic TV event. There are some simplification with history that makes this an easy underdog sports story. It treats both Billie Jean and Bobby rather well. The two performances are great. Bobby comes off as a loveable lout and his respect for Billie Jean's game is a great asset to his character. His connections to the darker side of gambling is papered over and the theory that he threw the match is never mentioned. Billie Jean is of course the heroine but her lesbianism is never mentioned. The simplification highlights the bigger woman's liberation ideas and makes for an easy good sports movie. The tennis action could use a little help. This is a great story and this is perfect for the TV treatment.

Amen, sister! Can I get a witness? Hallelujah, I'm saved! Yes, he orthodox gospel of feminist rectitude is proclaimed at full volume in this trying-to-be-relevant-but-mostly-fluffy made-for-TV movie.My daughter has recently taken up an interest in tennis, so I dropped this lightweight drama in my Netflix queue, not expecting much either way. As it turned out, this could have been a really bad movie, but thankfully it's not. What saves it (hallelujah, it's saved!) from being just another dreary feminist harangue is good performances from Holly Hunter as Wimbledon champion Billie Jean King and Ron Silver as the aging hustler Bobby Riggs. I was going to further criticize this movie for unequal treatment: making King an actual human being but portraying Riggs as a nothing but a one-dimensional buffoon (after all, who doesn't want a dastardly villain who is easily dispatched?), but the more I read about Riggs, the more I came to realize that that was the way he was in real life.This is not a fine-cuisine-and-red-wine type of movie; it's more like a Burger King meal deal. Fun, but not to be taken too seriously, and not with all the heavy-handed preaching.

Holly Hunter as Billie Jean King gives her usual great performance, and Ron Silver is absolutely brilliant as Bobby Riggs. The story told me a lot I didn't know about the things that went on leading up to the match. One major revelation was what Bobby Riggs inadvertently did for women's tennis and women's liberation.

One of the most entertaining, best-written/directed TV movies I've seen. Jane Anderson has given us a classic of quality. A slice of the past that sums up a turning point in American history. Holly Hunter, Ron Silver......the best.