Sports documentaries are a tricky beast. They can bring out the best in people, have ready metaphors, and have clearly defined stakes. They can also be somewhat gimmicky and subsume their subject characters in artificial games with no larger relevance and artificial rivalries. That’s the challenge that KINGS OF VENICE faces.
KINGS OF VENICE is set on the not so mean streets of Venice, California at some of the last remaining paddle tennis courts in the country. And don’t you dare confuse paddle tennis with pickleball. Padde tennis has different size courts, different equipment, and is altogether faster, more athletic, and more competitive. You can get hustled for money on a paddle tennis court. Paddle tennis aficionados will take offense at confusing the two sports.
Paddle tennis is also clearly a declining sport. Once legitimate with televised national championships and everything it never crossed over. Maybe due to the unlikability of the best player in the sport. You apparently can be the best player in the world at a sport in the most sports obsessed country in the world, and not get any recognition or money out of it. Which has to be especially galling if you have a huge ego.
And with pickleball growing in popularity and the pandemic closing down opportunities, along with fights over court space between the paddle tennis community and the pickleball community, what’s a person to do? How about putting on a show? Or at least a winner-take-all tournament with a big cash prize?
So you combine colorful characters, gambling, and television and you essentially have a wrestling special. Problem is that it tries so hard for superficial glitz and manufactured drama, that the movie never finds any deeper meaning. It’s very busy trying to make fetch happen. But, at the end of the day, although someone wins the tournament, it doesn’t make paddle tennis any more successful or less threatened. It doesn’t change any lives.
But there is fun to be had. The film, directed by Sveinn Ingimundarson & S.D. Saltarelli, is colorful and full of lively characters. I, for one, want to know more about the hustler who lives life loudly and seems like a regular presence at the Grammies and the Super Bowl. There’s an 80-year-old who played Wimbledon in 1960 but gave that up to be a lawyer and is now enjoying his retirement. There’s the egotistical self-proclaimed GOAT. There’s the former male model that becomes an out-of-control rage monster on the court. It’s fun. There’s too much wrestling in the DNA. Too much playing for the camera with obviously gimmicky teams. Not enough stakes or doing much of anything to create grass roots support for the sport. But, it’s fun in the sense that all competition is fun too watch. But, the stakes are so small, that you wonder if it would have been better off being a Christopher Guest improv comedy.
The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival runs from April 16, 2026 until May 30, 2026. KINGS OF VENICE plays once more at the film festival on April 29, 2026 at the Oriental Theatre at 5:00 pm. Tickets to KINGS OF VENICE and other upcoming films can be purchased at MKEFILM.ORG.
