They are just trying to have some ready made excuses handy when the movie bombs.

Of course the stars of a new movie about a television show knew the impact of that show.

They are just trying to have some ready made excuses handy when the movie bombs.

Nicole Kidman

Javier Bardem

Being the Ricardos

‘Being the Ricardos’: Aaron Sorkin’s Bland Tackling of Lucille Ball [Review]

Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem are miscast as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and, to make matters worse, Aaron Sorkin’s lifeless filmmaking drowns it out even further. This is bland and unimaginative visual direction that sucks the energy out of every frame. The visuals are flat, the energy is stale, and our curiosity wanders every few seconds. It’s a film made for baby boomers who may have grown up watching ‘Lucy,’ but that’s about it.

Sorkin tackles the week that Lucille Ball was accused of being a communist, and in that same week, the newspapers have an account of Desi allegedly cheating on her. The convoluted story manages to also insert an unnecessary use of talking heads, which leads to flashbacks that recount how both met, fell in love, and took the industry by storm.

I hate to say it, but this film is a bore. It lacks any identity and emotional connectivity. It’s bland and without risk, or reward for that matter. Sorkin loves calculated and controlled storytelling, but the lack of looseness here omits joy, interest, or excitement. – Source

Being the Ricardos Review: It’s hard to see what Aaron Sorkin likes about Lucille Ball in unconvincing biopic

There’s always something distant about biopics like Being the Ricardos. Obviously there is; it’s only a reconstruction, after all, and that sort of simulation is always going to position the audience at a certain level of remove. But there’s something about Being the Ricardos in particular that exacerbates that sense, giving the whole film a sort of detached feel throughout.

On one level, that’s surprising. The Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz biopic is both written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, and arguably he’s spent his whole career building to something like this. He’s best known as creator of The West Wing, yes, or writer of films like The Social Network and The Trial of the Chicago 7, but he’s got a long background in comedy too. His first television show was sitcom Sports Night, a workplace comedy about a sports news show, which he later followed with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a comedy-drama about the production of an SNL type show. Even then, The West Wing was always much funnier than it was ever politically incisive anyway – so on the face of it, Sorkin tackling this story doesn’t not make sense.

But in practice it still doesn’t quite cohere. One common problem with biopics is that they’re too reverent, too starstruck by their subject, but Being the Ricardos seems to suffer the opposite problem. Watching it, it’s hard to tell what Sorkin actually likes about I Love Lucy or its leads – he’s obviously impressed by Ball’s talent as a producer, but it’s less clear that that he actually enjoys the programme she made. – Source