Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Being The Ricardos is a film I was keen to watch for the past few years. A look at the career and relationship between Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), I was interested in everything to do with this. Lucy and Desi were huge stars who helped to reshape the landscape of television comedy, the casting intrigued me, and Sorkin is often a brilliant writer able to convey a lot of information in entertaining and sharp dialogue.
The framework here is quite simple. We are shown a hectic time, and an important time, in the lives of Lucy and Desi. We also cut to some footage of people in the present talking about what they remember from their days witnessing the power couple make their show. Alongside our main stars are a couple of important supporting characters (played by J. K. Simmons and Nina Arianda), there’s a young writer (Alia Shawkat) who looks up to Lucy, but also has an idealism that doesn’t always take into account the diplomacy sometimes required to get the show made, and Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale) keeps trying to find a balance between the instincts of his stars and the feedback from the money men.
I won’t say that this is a bad film. The structure is a good choice, the key moments stringing the plot together work well, and it manages to celebrate the two main characters while also showing their problems. It isn’t great though, and that comes down to both the casting and the writing.
I really enjoy Kidman in many of her movie roles, but there’s a reason why she hasn’t had much success when trying her hand at comedy. Admittedly, this isn’t a comedy, but you have to believe how funny Lucille Ball can be when you see some of her famous moments being recreated onscreen, and Kidman just cannot manage it. Perhaps wary of looking too silly, or maybe not directed well enough by Sorkin, Kidman never really feels like Lucy when she has to be LUCY, although she does a perfectly good job of showing us the woman behind the TV persona. Bardem has a similar issue, although he also feels a bit weak whether portraying Desi the performer or Desi the man. The better performances come from Simmons and Arianda, both convincing as people and comedic performers, and Shawkat, who spends a lot of time being depressed by the constant crush of reality as she attempts to convince those around her of the importance of their platform. Hale is fine, but his character is the least interesting of the main bunch.
Sorkin’s dialogue just doesn’t work here though, and perhaps he would have been wise to get the structure in place and then pass the framework along to someone else. Everything that reveals actual truth about our leads is often presented in a heavy-handed and underlined way, and the mention of how Desi helped to revolutionize the TV sitcom is so horribly shoe-horned in that it feels like a clumsy segue in an improvised skit. The direction is disappointingly flat and lifeless, ensuring that Sorkin can be blamed for this being far below par for almost everyone involved.
There are still moments that work, especially when everything starts to tie together on the way to the final scenes, and Lucy and Desi are certainly worthy of the 131-minute runtime, but I won’t ever want to rewatch it. Maybe a book or documentary will serve them better, and I intend to find out when I have the time (so any recommendations are welcome).
5/10
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