Oscars 2022: Every Best Picture Nominee Ranked

Another of the Academy's more obvious picks of the year, King Richard deserves a certain amount of credit for telling its heartfelt, by-the-numbers sports biopic from the perspective of someone other than its iconic sporting heroes.

Here, Will Smith stars as Richard Williams, the passionate, hard-working, but flawed father of tennis legends Venus and Serena. Smith fills the screen with his presence, allowing Richard to be more than a caricature, but the fully formed image of a father unwilling to back down.

Unfortunately, that's all that can be said of King Richard, the rest of it struggling to dig into the broader implications of Richard's actions (which probably had something to do with the fact that the movie was approved by the Williams estate).

It's poignant, well-acted, but ultimately unoriginal by the time it draws to a close, and won't likely be remembered for anything other than probably netting Smith his long-overdue Oscar going forward.