PLOT: A peek behind the scenes of I Love Lucy, arguably the most popular sitcom of all time. The story occurs during an especially tumultuous week as Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) fights to keep the show together after being smeared as a communist amid the red scare while also dealing with her husband and creative partner Desi Arnaz’s (Javier Bardem) philandering.
REVIEW: It’s hard to overestimate the importance of I Love Lucy to the modern sitcom. At its height, the show was watched by 70% of all American households. It was also the first tv show to have feature-level production values. In addition, it pioneered the use of the multi-camera set-up, which allowed it to be recorded in front of a live studio audience but not aired live, which was the practice back then. If a show aired live, the only way it could ever be rebroadcast would be through the use of a kinescope recording, which was an image filmed off of a TV set by a 35mm or 16mm camera. I Love Lucy changed all of that.
Of course, it also made Lucille Ball one of the world’s biggest stars, which was unexpected as she was primarily known as a B-list actress. The show would make her an icon. However, Lucille Ball is so well-known that bringing her story to the big screen is a tough nut to crack, and already Nicole Kidman’s casting has been wildly controversial because the two don’t especially look alike.
The fact is, Kidman’s physical resemblance, or lack thereof, is not a make-or-break issue in a movie like Being the Ricardos. Instead, the problem is while there could have been a fascinating story to be told about Ball’s rise to the top of the heap, writer-director Aaron Sorkin has made a movie that hews so closely to his established walk and talks formula that it almost feels like parody. Watching this movie, I felt like I learned very little about Lucy and Desi, and indeed anyone who doesn’t already know them won’t walk away with an enhanced appreciation for the pair, who deserve to be remembered.
It’s also a movie made with a distinctly modern attitude that, commendable as it may be, feels out of place in a film set in the fifties. At one point, Lucy turns to her husband and says, “don’t gaslight me,” which feels like a very 2021 thing to say. The film tries to boil down what made Lucy by setting it over one very stressful week, and indeed she was smeared as a communist at one point, leading Desi to quip years later that “the only thing red about her was her hair.”
But, the movie also flashes back to Lucy’s career and gives it a rather uncharitable view – basically that anything she did pre-I Love Lucy was crap and that her career was over by the time it made its debut. In reality, after losing her RKO contract, she had a good run at MGM and made a few hit movies before going to TV. Her career was doing fine, which, if anything, made I Love Lucy even more of a coup for TV.
Kidman tries valiantly, but the Sorkin dialogue isn’t naturalistic. I never felt like I was watching the real Lucy like I did when the character showed up in a cameo (played by Christine Ebersole) in Licorice Pizza. She fares better than Javier Bardem, who can’t match Arnaz’s insane charisma and sex appeal. Google the guy playing “Babalu” or singing “Cuban Pete” and see why he was a star. Bardem is a great actor, but he’s not a song and dance man. He’s better at playing Arnaz as a businessman, and the film does deserve credit for depicting him as a behind-the-scenes force to be reckoned with.
Being the Ricardos is more interesting when it focuses on the frayed dynamic between Lucy and Desi’s co-stars, William Frawley and Vivian Vance. Frawley, played here by an uncanny J.K. Simmons, was in his sixties when cast and known to be a bitter alcoholic, although he had a soft spot for Lucy and Desi, which comes off in the movie. He and Vance, who was decades younger but forced to play older, despised each other. The film is intriguing when it focuses on the rivalry between Nina Arianda’s Vance and Lucy, with the latter warning her not to lose too much weight or make herself too appealing, lest she take the focus away from its star. This was a real thing that went on behind the scenes can could have been turned into its own movie.
In the end, Being the Ricardos is a decent movie and certainly never dull. However, I can’t help but think a fantastic film about Lucy and Desi is still waiting to get made, and Sorkin, as much as I (sometimes) like him, has a lane and a formula he doesn’t depart from here. So call this one a somewhat missed opportunity, although there are still good things about it.
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