Battle of the Sexes (2017)

This film has finally come to my area, a week after trailers announced that it was opening everywhere.
Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) is a great tennis player, for a woman. She is at the top of her game, but she isn't being paid as much as the men and it bothers her, as it should. Her prize money is one eighth of the what the men will win but the size of the crowd is the same.
Frustrated, she creates her own league and her agent, Gladys (a great Sarah Silverman) finds them a sponsor. These women are making a statement.
In the other circle is gambler and former tennis star Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell). Though his wife is wealthy and supporting him financially, he still believes that a woman's proper place is in the kitchen. Then, his wife kicks him out when she discovers that he is gambling again and for whatever reason, desperate to get back in the spotlight, Bobby decides to have a match versus the best woman in the game.
While out on tour, Billie Jean meets and falls in love with her hairdresser, Marilyn (Andrea Riseborough). That was probably the one false note in this film, that overly long scene when Billie Jean realizes that she has feelings for a woman. Billie Jean is married to Larry King (Austin Stowell, couldn't they have also dyed his sideburns). And she knows what loving a woman means in the 1970s and so does Larry. Side Note: It's not the famous Larry King, but someone else entirely.
The first man versus woman match, thanks to her troubled life isn't Billie Jean but rather the Australian Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee), who is rather disgusted by the secrets Billie Jean has been keeping. Margaret loses badly and Billie Jean knows that she needs to play Bobby and beat him, just to get him off his high horse.
The match is a huge spectacular, ridiculously so, each player is carried in on a throne and each presents each other with a gift. Billie Jean's present to Bobby is a pig.
She wins, I figured she had to and Bobby is so defeated at the end, and probably humiliated but for whatever reason, Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue), his wife, takes him back.
Billie Jean has a good cry before returning to the court for her moment in the sun. She had changed so much with her victory. She really made a statement. And the side of right won, at least for that brief, shining moment.
The film is superb, with excellent performances, Stone might be doing the best work of her career here, and that is saying something, considering she is the reigning Oscar winner for Best Actress. Carell is also great. The film truly creates that atmosphere of 1973, which cannot be easy to do. It shows two parallel lives with great skill and attention to detail. It is a film that is a must see for all, not just sports fans. Side Note: You don't have to understand a thing about tennis to enjoy this film.
What Billie Jean was fighting for back then is something that women are still fighting for. Grade: A-