Emma Stone and Steve Carell star in a scene from the movie "Battle of the Sexes." The Catholic News Service classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. (CNS/Twentieth Century Fox)

By Catholic News Service

The early 1970s in all its revanchist sexism, double-knit-fabric garishness and choking cigarette smoke is the setting of the coming-of-age story for women’s tennis, as Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) takes on Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) in the famed 1973 exhibition match in Houston’s Astrodome. This lightly fictionalized version of history is ultimately more about King than the past-his-prime Riggs, but the script by Simon Beaufoy, as directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, takes pains to show each character’s harsh isolation and crippling doubts.

The film contains same-sex kissing and implied adulterous lesbian sexual activity, references to aberrant sexuality and fleeting profanities.

Catholic News Service classification, L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. Motion Picture Association of America rating, PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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