Being the Ricardos

Being the Ricardos-480P

Being the Ricardos-480P

As "Being The Ricardos" (20211 release; 133 ,in.) opens, several talking heads, mostly "I Love Lucy" staff writers, are giving their perspectives on the mammoth show that it was, and the events that hit the show in a one-week span in 1952. We then go back in time as Desi comes home and he and Lucille start arguing immediately, only to kiss and make up. It is "Monday, Table Read", and the show's production staff is gathered to run through that week's script. But dark clouds hang over Desi and Lucille... At this point we are 10 min into the movie. Couple of comments: this is the latest from writer-director Aaron Sorkin ("Molly's Game", "The Trial of The Chicago 7"). Here he goes behind the curtain to give us a glimpse of what life for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz was like both within the TV hit show, and outside. Not that the film isn't titled "Being Ball and Arnaz", but instead "Being the Ricardos" (the TV characters). Despite what looks to be an amazing production set and a massive amount of other talent attached to this film, I found the overall viewing experience strangely off-putting. I never did buy into Nicole Kidman's role as Lucille/Lucy, nor for that matter into Javier Bardem's role as Desi/Ricky. It all felt so... clinical, and very much 'staged' (in fact, the scenes involving the making of the weekly TV show felt as if it was a theater production). All of this is a bit surprising as Aaron Sorkin's track record not only as a director but even more so as a writer ("The Social Network", "Moneyball", "Steve Jobs", just to name those) is nothing short of stellar, but here the sum of the parts simply doesn't add up. "Being the Ricardos" was given a limited 2 week theater run before shifting a few days ago to Amazon Prime, where I caught it. I couldn't help but be disappointed with this film. But you don't have to take my word for it, and I encourage you to check it out, be it on Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Video, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Meandering. Boring. How can a movie about Lucy not have one laugh? For two hours I couldn't stop looking at the horrible makeup on Nicole Kidman. This is your typical biopic. And when you have Sorkin at the helm, it is going to be bloated, overwritten and plodding. There has to be a better one down the road.

I can't say enough on just how boring and uninteresting this snooze-fest is. "Being the Ricardos" is miscast, poorly directed, the storyline is choppy, and lacks any chemistry between Kidman and Bardem as Lucy and Desi. And trying to suspend disbelief that Nicole Kidman is Lucille Ball is not going to happen. I can't get past that puffy prosthetic-riddled face. Lucille Ball was a beautiful woman, Kidman looks like a hungover alcoholic. And Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz is no prize either. It was good that Aaron Sorkin gave us a peek behind the scenes, and showed us how bringing a TV show to life is more than just memorizing lines from a script. There's a lot of back and forth, plus creative differences involved to get to the finished product. But that's where any interest ended for me. Sorkin is a much better writer than he is a director. Sorkin's simply not a good enough director to bring out the intimate and personal details of the characters he's directing. Neither Lucy nor Desi had any emotional depth. Kidman was wooden and unconvincing as Lucille Ball, and Bardem was struggling to find his footing as Desi Arnaz, and that's strange to see with him. J. K. Simmons was the absolute best thing in this flailing mess of a film as Fred Mertz, and an honorable mention goes to Tony Hale as Jess Oppenheimer. I think if Sorkin just stayed with the one week "Red Scare" and the behind-the-scenes drama, "Being the Ricardos" would have been a much MUCH better film (Lucille Ball was outed by radio news legend Walter Winchell, as a one-time member of the Communist Party. Then Arnaz is accused of cheating on Lucy by the tabloids, plus, Ball in real-life was pregnant and wanted her pregnancy written into the show, which during this puritanical era, was problematic for the network because they preferred its viewers to remain ignorant of how babies are made). Sorkin should have played to his strengths, instead of clumsily time-jumping from when Lucy and Desi first met and Ball's earlier career, back to their current reality of their strained marriage and the very real possibility of losing the one thing they're on the same page with during the communist issue with Lucy, and that's their show, "I Love Lucy. But don't get me started with that puzzlingly weird faux documentary silliness interspersed within "Being the Ricardos", where Sorkin had actors playing older versions of those who worked on "I Love Lucy". Was this a docudrama, a documentary or a mockumentary? I have no idea, but what I do know is, that decision was a whole lot of nonsense. "Being the Ricardos" could have been a great film, but it is a glaring example of when someone with an abundance of screenwriting talent, should have handed the casting and directing over to someone else who was better at it. Sorkin had too many hats and truthfully, only one of them fit. It's a thoroughly unsatisfying film with glaring flaws and an identity crisis.

I love Lucy is one of the most revolutionary TV shows of all time. Things that we take for granted when watching sitcoms this show created (for instance if they were to do a sequel to this movie it could center around the fact that a rerun did not exist prior to I Love Lucy). Many younger fans may not know anything about the show but I'm old enough to live through a time in which Lucy was a part of a handful of choices on TV, and lucky for me I Love Lucy was genuinely funny. This made the movie interesting to find out about Lucille Ball, the woman who played Lucy Riccardo. The movie is actually a composite of a few events in the life of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz squeezed into a format that looks like a day in the life on a TV show. Being the Riccardos showcases the week it takes to make one episode of I Love Lucy. From a Monday table read to the Friday filming. Inside of this week is added certain highlights that most likely span the entire length of the show. Events like: Lucille being investigated as a communist, Desi's infidelity, and two things that I did not know about, Vivian Vance's contempt with being Lucy's less desirable sidekick Ethel Mertz and the challenges of being Madelyn Pugh if not the first, one of the first women writing on a television show. Nicole Kidman gave an excellent performance in this flick. Its one of these things where I can see Oscar written all over it. She played Lucille Ball better than she played Lucy Riccardo but that may have been the point cause we got some inside of what a genius Ball is (Thank god the only "issue "with this story is that men could not stomach such brilliance coming from a woman and not something like Cliff Huxtable's very big difference from the man who played him). Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz was amazing as well. This is a situation where they could have messed this up trying to do a bad imitation of Ricky Ricardo, but it does feel like Bardem did his research to do it right. Being the Riccardos could be considered an ensemble cast cause even though it centers on Lucille Ball and her husband, its focus on their iconic show met we got a lot a detail that blended in very well without being overwhelming. We got to see a boat load of characters played very well by some recognizable faces. Aaron Sorkin did an absolutely wonderful job telling the tale of the Queen of Comedy.

I loved the series and I appreciate the fine work of Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. The accuracy can be only a detail in this chronicle of the US TV shows history and, I admitt , I do not know very much about the life of the main characters. But I am satisfied by the ball of stories used by director Aaron Sorkin for creating a realistic portrait of a period. This is the basic virtue of this film - to give a large picture of a time , in its precise details and rich significances. The bad detail - the horrible make up of Nicole Kidman , giving impression of plastic face. Like many biopics , a hommage to an epoque. Intense effort, good acting, nice reconstruction of series scenes and a decent manner to reflect the story of a not just ordinary couple.

The main problem with this film is not only its pacing but the story, it's not interesting enough to be two hours long. The second problem I have with this film is the casting, Bardem and Kidman are just not right for these roles at all, I am so sick of seeing the same actors in Hollywood. I am so tired of both of these actors, bored to be honest of seeing the same faces in every movie today. Thank God for television series that continues to show NEW talent. Hollywood is dead. This movie was so full of cringe acting I could not even finish it. Why make this at all, this is basically a documentary with subpar dramatizations of things one can read in a shorter amount of time. The only positive takeaway from this I can say with certainty, is that this would make for something perfect to fall asleep to.

source: Being the Ricardos

I loved the old Lucy episodes, they were my introduction to North American television and the sitcom. Nicole Kidman is a hopeless casting of the beloved Lucy. That horsey laugh I loved is missing and what's with that lifeless face of Kidman? And she's far too flat, in every sense for the role. And too old. I kept looking at those staring eyes and that frozen doll face and shaking my head. Javier Badem is not as seriously miscast but is a little old for the role in that Desi was younger than Lucy and fairly boyish. I never quite engaged emotionally with the pair of them. The dialogue sounded fake and the anachronisms were jarring. ("Gaslighting?" seriously?). The jumps were awkward with the timeline all over the place. And PS wasn't Frawley gay - but he gets upset by a young woman calling him old? Lucie Arnaz and her brother were heavily invested in this production and have done a lot of heavy duty supporting marketing. Of course. The process of the show-making itself was very well done, the studio audiences, the run throughs. But even the interaction of the writers/producers felt out of place and time. And Lucy doing laundry while reading a script was a bit of a stretch. The underlying constant betrayals by Desi was given short shrift here. The shallow foundation of their marriage, his alcoholism and her heartbreak off set glossed over. I'd love to see a good script and good casting do them justice. They deserve far, far better than this shallow treatment. 4/10.