FILM
BATTLE OF THE SEXES ★★★
(PG) 121 minutes (General release)

In 1973, with second-wave feminism at its height, former tennis great Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) challenged reigning woman's champion Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) to an exhibition match, determined to show that even at his advanced age he could put King in her place.

This was hardly a turning point in history, but it's a suitable basis for the kind of mainstream entertainment designed to flatter 21st-century sensibilities, harking back to the corny tradition of A League of Their Own.

Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) is in his comfort zone here, as are the directing team of Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton (Little Miss Sunshine). Faris and Dayton show a little more visual ambition than in their previous work, echoing 1970s cinema in their use of heavy grain, long lenses and saturated colour.

Despite these stylistic trappings, Battle of the Sexes is a film as concerned with the present as the past. When King objects to being paid far less than her male counterparts, there's no escaping the parallels with similar complaints made recently in Hollywood – and this is far from the only scene where the filmmakers might as well have superimposed a caption reading "This still happens today".

Truth be told, Dayton and Faris are far more interested in the cultural significance of King's encounter with Riggs than they are in the nitty-gritty of what it takes to be a champion. That leaves Stone at a bit of a loss: her alternately tough and tremulous King isn't a character so much as a magnet for audience sympathy, and her love interest Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) is a wan flower child no more vividly imagined than girlfriends in sports movies tend to be.

In compensation, there's an abundance of scene-stealing character turns from stalwarts like Sarah Silverman and Alan Cumming, not to mention Australia's Jessica McNamee, impressively restrained as Margaret Court. The funniest scenes belong to Carell, who goes to town with the conception of Riggs as a troll who is also the life of the party, while letting us glimpse the forlorn man beneath the over-the-top persona.

He's so endearing he threatens to undermine the movie's message, however this turns out to be part of the game plan of the script, which spells out that his clowning is harmless next to the "respectable" misogyny of tennis boss Jack Kramer, played with convincing malevolence by Bill Pullman.