Being the Ricardos
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz face a crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.
- Released: 2021-12-10
- Runtime: 132 minutes
- Genre: Drama, History
- Stars: Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons, Jake Lacy, Nina Arianda, Alia Shawkat, Linda Lavin, Clark Gregg, Tony Hale, Robert Pine, Ronny Cox, Nelson Franklin, Christopher Denham, John Rubinstein, Jonah Platt, Matt Cook, Jamie Miller, Pamela Mitchell, Renee Pezzotta, Ron Ostrow, Breanna Wing, Kate Ellie Fitzgerald, John Funk, Dana Lyn Baron, Dan Sachoff, Jenya Chaplin, John F. Carpenter, Gail Rastorfer, Shiree Nelson, Lori Dorfman, Jeremiah Ripley, Angela Leib, Evie Nicholson, Louis Delavenne, Jeff Holman, Brian Howe, Ron Perkins, Baize Buzan, Joshua Bednarsky, Max Silvestri, Chris Wolfe, Caroline Anderson, Russ Burd, Guido Cocomello, David Saenz, Stephanie Lesh-Farrell, Lawrence Novikoff, Jack Benza, Peter Onorati, Rick Batalla, Melinda Sullivan, Christian Roberts, Gus Lynch, Allan Wayne Anderson, David Jonathan Fine, Val Chmerkovskiy, Asiel Hardison, Reina Hidalgo, Jenna Johnson, Will Loftis, Noelle Marsh, Leo Moctezuma, Nayara Núñez, Britt Stewart, Eddie Torres Jr., James Patrick Duffy, Emily Marsh, Cece Camps, Daniel Armella, Molly Meyer, Jenna Johnson, Christian Roberts
- Director: Aaron Sorkin
Comments
- Lejink - 19 April 2024
Hello Desilu, Goodbye Heart
I've been binging recently on the Desi Arnez / Lucille Ball story. I'm currently listening to an excellent TCM podcast on their lives and careers , Season 3 of "The Plot Thickens" if you want to look it up and have also just watched Amy Poehler's archival documentary "Lucy and Desi" so I guess it was inevitable that I would end up at Aaron Sorkin's movie which intertwines a key week for the couple at the height of their fame with a potted history of their time together and experiences in Hollywood.
It's 1952, they're at the height of their fame but Lucy and Desi are confronted with and have to face up to not one but three crucial events in their lives. Firstly, Lucy's fury at the widely-read "Confidential" magazine's front-page exposé of Desi's philandering lifestyle, then a potentially even more damaging revelation by coast-to-coast broadcaster Walter Winchell of Lucille's past sympathy with the Communist Party, this when the Red Scare in Hollywood was also peaking and finally the news that Lucy herself was pregnant again and the ramifications of this for their runaway success TV show "I Love Lucy".
My foreknowledge of events probably helped me to follow the action and I was thus able to recognise the sequence of events depicted even as I recognised in places the dramatic licence inevitably taken in some cases by Sorkin. Probably the most unusual plot-point he employs in the film is Lucy's insistence on effectively rewriting the next episode of the show, which while done to no doubt demonstrate Ball's intelligence and insight into how comedy works is also used to highlight her deflection of all the combined trauma of these potentially career-threatening incidents.
Try as I could, I just wasn't convinced by Nicole Kidman as Lucy. For me, she doesn't nail Ball's distinctive appearance or voice. Javier Bardem's Desi I felt was a better fit, his swarthy good looks and natural Latin-tinged accent worked better in his portrayal of Desi. J. K. Simmon's part as "I Love Lucy" co-star William Frawley on the other hand to be afforded over-prominence to me, do much so that it almost like a directorial sop to the actor himself. I also felt the recreated modern-day anecdotal interviews of the actual show's producer and writer to be distracting rather than helpful.
Sorkin's direction is stylish if prosaic at times as he carefully overlays his interlinked narratives. I also felt his dialogue sometimes came over as often unrealistic and stylised, with almost every line uttered by his characters straining for pith, wit and of course humour. I personally doubt that comedians and script-writers are always so erudite, a bit more mundanity would have made the characterisations more credible I felt.
I've been binging recently on the Desi Arnez / Lucille Ball story. I'm currently listening to an excellent TCM podcast on their lives and careers , Season 3 of "The Plot Thickens" if you want to look it up and have also just watched Amy Poehler's archival documentary "Lucy and Desi" so I guess it was inevitable that I would end up at Aaron Sorkin's movie which intertwines a key week for the couple at the height of their fame with a potted history of their time together and experiences in Hollywood.
It's 1952 and they're at the height of their fame but Lucy and Desi are confronted with and have to face up to not one but three crucial events in their lives. Firstly, Lucy's fury at the widely-read "Confidential" magazine's front-page exposé of Desi's philandering lifestyle, then a potentially even more damaging revelation by coast-to-coast broadcaster Walter Winchell of Lucille's past sympathy with the Communist Party, this when the Red Scare in Hollywood was also peaking and finally the news that Lucy herself was pregnant again and the ramifications of this for their runaway success TV show "I Love Lucy".
My foreknowledge of events probably helped me to follow the action and I was thus able to recognise the sequence of events depicted even as I recognised in places the dramatic licence inevitably taken in some cases by Sorkin. Probably the most unusual plot-point he employs in the film is Lucy's insistence on effectively rewriting the next episode of the show, which while done to no doubt demonstrate Ball's intelligence and insight into how comedy works is also used to highlight her deflection of all the combined trauma of these potentially career-threatening incidents.
Try as I could, I just wasn't convinced by Nicole Kidman as Lucy. For me, she doesn't nail Ball's distinctive appearance or voice. Javier Bardem's Desi I felt was a better fit, his swarthy good looks and natural Latin-tinged accent worked better in his portrayal of Desi. J. K. Simmon's part as "I Love Lucy" co-star William Frawley on the other hand to be afforded over-prominence to me, do much so that it almost like a directorial sop to the actor himself. I also felt the recreated modern-day anecdotal interviews of the actual show's producer and writer to be distracting rather than helpful.
Sorkin's direction is stylish if prosaic at times as he carefully overlays his interlinked narratives. I also felt his dialogue sometimes came over as often unrealistic and stylised, with almost every line uttered by his characters straining for pith, wit and of course humour. I personally doubt that comedians and script-writers are always so erudite, a bit more mundanity would have made the characterisations more credible I felt.
Nevertheless, he brings all his elements to a suitably dramatic conclusion ending on a final shot which somehow reminded of one used by Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane's" opera scene. Interesting to watch as it was, in the end however, I'd have to conclude by saying that I liked rather than loved this portrayal of Lucy.
Nevertheless, he brings all his elements to a suitably dramatic conclusion ending on a final shot which somehow reminded of one used by Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane's" opera scene. Interesting to watch as it was, in the end however, I'd have to conclude by saying that I liked rather than loved this portrayal of Lucy. - punch87 - 2 April 2023
Kidman manages some dazzling Ball-like comedic bits, and Simmons and Arianda steal the show with their acerbic bickering.
If the relationship at the heart of biopic snapshot Being The Ricardos - between Nicole Kidman's Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem's Desi Arnaz - is a rocky one, the same cannot be said of the marriage between Aaron Sorkin's scriptwriting and Ball's quick-witted humour, which is one made in heaven. The writer, also directing here, has come under fire a lot in the past for his writing of female characters, a criticism he avoided adding to with 2020s The Trial Of The Chicago 7 by dint of its virtual all-male cast, but he has a ball with Ball and her cohorts, serving up dialogue as sharp and springy as an elastic band snapped against a wrist.
As with the Chicago 7, the truth is in here somewhere, but it's served up Sorkin style, so that he takes different events from Ball and Arnaz's marriage - an accusation of Communist activity, a gossip magazine revelation of a potential affair by Arnaz and an announcement that Ball is pregnant - and puts them into the pressure cooker of a single week on the set as they prepare for an episode of the second season of the show in 1952. He also employs a clever framing device, which sees the, now much older, writers, reminisce about the show, which allows him to dip in and out of the past without being too jarring. A further strategy takes us into the mind of Ball as, at intervals, she imagines how scenes of the show will play out, scenes rendered by Sorkin in black and white.
This might sound like a lot of mechanics but the pieces fit together surprisingly well thanks to Sorkin's breezy dialogue, which keeps us with Ball as she tries to navigate her personal problems while still keeping her show on top. While it's hard to completely lose yourself in Kidman's performance, simply because she is such a well known actress in her own right, she is helped by Sorkin introducing both her and Arnaz from the feet up, so that we can briefly appreciate both her and Bardem's voice work without the conflict of recognising the actors beneath the make-up.
Not only does she get the tone of Ball right, Kidman also captures the comedy star's forthright energy, an essential fearlessness and truthfulness about herself that Sorkin also evidently admires. Whether it's her refusal to lie about why she "ticked a box" or her persistence in trying to make a scene more funny in the face of opposition from her executive producer Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale), she never opts for taking the easy way out. Even if you're no fan of the original series - something Sorkin nods to in a conversation between Ball and the lone woman writer Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) - you'll be hard pressed not to fall for Kidman's portrayal of a woman who knew and wasn't afraid to speak her mind.
Bardem is solid in support as the Cuban Arnaz, the energy between he and Ball fizzy and believable, although as you might expect, Sorkin gives Ball all the best lines - even finding room for the most unexpected jump scare I've seen on film in a long time. Character is key, however, and there's a palpable sense of Ball being torn about believing Arnaz and her anxiety about her ability to create a sort of "home" with him onset that she can't manufacture off, but Sorkin never belittles her, treating both her talent and her troubles with seriousness beneath the surface laughs. He also spares more than a thought for her co-star Vivian Vance (Nina Ariadna), who is struggling with being stuck in the role of dowdy Ethel, giving Ariadna plenty to work with as Vivian spars with her grumpy older co-star William Frawley (JK Simmons).
Although Sorkin, as a director, struggled with the bigger crowd scenes in Chicago 7, here he's back on much firmer ground, within the goldfish bowl of the writers' room environment, and the studio stage, that though historic examples of type, must strike a chord with his own experience on television shows.
Some of the production values are on the weak side, particularly the lighting, which is oddly muted, given that films made for streaming services are generally overlit if anything - and there is something very odd about Ball's hair colour, which moves between pure ginger and something much more auburn seemingly on a whim. You may not completely love Lucy by the end of it but you will get a sense of what it was like to be a woman like her in that particular era - which is just as impressive an accomplishment. - killercharm - 6 October 2022
ok movie
An ok movie portraying the I Love Lucy show and its denizens. The story is just ok but the ending is naked worship. Neither of the stars is right for the part. I won't say the actors have no chemistry but the characters, as portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, have none. I understand the voice control thing Ms. Kidman is doing, but rather than coming across as Lucille Ball, she sounds like Lucille Ball sometimes and Nicole Kidman at others. That's fine, I kind of like teasing it apart, but what they did to her face defies logic. It does nothing to make her look more like Lucille Ball, and why would she want to? So, is it to make her look closer to 39 rather than in her 50s? Neither of these actors looks (or acts) anywhere close to the ages they are portraying. If Lucille is 39 in the Being the Ricardos universe then Desi is 31, and a new father. Instead we see a middle-aged couple who look and act middle-aged. Even though I adore both actors it's just ok this time. The 21st century language would have been so much more entertaining, fitting and conducive if replaced with the lingo of the era. These were people who not only loved America but really dug the times they live in. TV was all that. Another small beef I have is the lack of logic during many of Lucille's conversations. It's like watching a less adept Network. In Network it was supposed to be lightning-quick clever and maybe a little too quick for the average person (maybe not, but it's supposed to be). In Being the Ricardos it's supposed to be lightning-quick and is more like plodding. During a week in the lives of the I Love Lucy show we are backstage and at home with the Ricardos. A possible scandal blows up about her being a communist alongside one about him philandering. - jeroduptown - 27 July 2022
Vitameatavegamin
Not sure that Kidman was the best Lucy outside of having a similar body style....she was a little cold and brittle. Interesting look into the live of Lucy and Desi, even if the communist thing was a little outta left field. - gillwheeler-14313 - 1 May 2022
Disappointing
I was a huge fan of Lucille Ball, a funny, brilliant comedienne and this did not tell the story well at all. Neither did I feel Nicole Kidman was a good choice to play Lucy - for someone so well known it needed to be someone who was believable as her. As in previous reviews Lucy had an extremely expressive face - Nicole Kidman does not. I believe Debra Messing would have been perfect. I reluctantly watched it all, believing it might improve. It didn't ! I'm sure Lucy and Desi's family must have been disappointed too, it did neither justice.
