Being the Ricardos will have a limited theatrical release on Dec. 10 and release on Amazon Prime Video on Dec. 21.
The disconnect between Aaron Sorkin the writer and Aaron Sorkin the director is fascinating, and it takes especially strange shape in Being the Ricardos. The film is about saving the classic sitcom I Love Lucy from cancellation after a political scandal, but it’s also about the real-life couple who starred in the show as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, mega-stars Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), and a personal scandal that concurrently hits the tabloids. It’s about a great many little things on top of this, from McCarthyism, to industry sexism, to the foundation of the couple’s relationship. Ultimately — and most vitally, as a reflection of Sorkin’s multiple hats — it’s about Lucille’s need for control, both personally and creatively. However, it’s only “about” the confluence of these things, and the way they take shape in a singular person, in the same way a shopping list for ingredients like bread, meat, lettuce, and Dijon is a toasted gourmet sandwich. Sorkin will forever have classic screenplays like The Social Network and A Few Good Men under his belt, but he needs a David Fincher or a Rob Reiner to bring his words to life. His directorial work so far is a bore.
Then again, Being the Ricardos also has the distinction of being a bad idea from the start — or at least, one that could have only been saved by a drastically different edit — thanks to its mind-boggling structure. Like The Social Network, which was framed by two concurrent court cases, Sorkin gives Being the Ricardos a tri-pronged narrative, but where Fincher’s Facebook film staked its claim with lightning speed, Sorkin’s sitcom saga plods along for extended periods, and keeps introducing more and more elements of its premise until it’s unable to hold them all, or hold our attention on any one of them.
It begins with older actors standing in for I Love Lucy writers Madelyn Pugh (Linda Lavin), Bob Carroll (Ronny Cox), and showrunner Jess Oppenheimer (John Rubinstein), who offer testimonials to a fictitious camera crew, though when and where this is set is anyone’s guess (they refer to Lucille in the past tense, as if they’re seated in some fantasy present, but the sitcom star actually outlived Oppenheimer). Real details aside, the story the writers tell unfolds on screen during the course of about a week, from the table read to the eventual taping of the classic episode “Fred and Ethel Fight,” which, despite its tale of a domestic dispute, isn’t used to meaningfully reflect Lucille and Desi’s dynamic; it really could’ve been any episode at the end of the day.
The three writers are present in these 1950s scenes, and are played by younger actors Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy, and Tony Hale respectively. However, the older writers also narrate details from earlier in Lucille and Desi’s lives, like the day they met, and their early failures and successes, but this presents a pair of problems. First, little within the narrative or visual framing suggests that either of these timelines, whether in the studio or earlier, are about the writers’ perspective on Lucille and Desi, or anyone’s perspective but their own, so the framing device feels immediately perfunctory. Second, without the older trio of writers explicitly mentioning what scene is set at which stage of the story — which they sometimes do during or after these scenes, and sometimes not at all — it’s often difficult to discern this from basic details like the performances or the makeup and costumes. It’s equally difficult to discern what a particular scene or interaction is really about until someone states the subtext outright.
Despite what cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and production designer Susan Lyall bring to the table, with warm tones that feel like sepia memories, the film has a stunning lack of interest in telling its story visually. Lucille and Desi’s relationship plays out with the exact same monotone energy, whether it’s their flirty first meeting or a conversation about infidelity several years later. Bardem tries to bring a rapid-fire cadence to Desi, but an unfortunate amount of the story’s inertia is owed to Kidman’s performance. She’s generally an unimpeachable actress, but something went disastrously wrong with this conception of Lucille somewhere along the way. She barely emotes throughout the entire film. Maybe her prosthetics were too constricting, but the way she’s directed feels equally at fault. She accesses the right vocal rasp, but her body language and delivery feel all wrong; they’re too restricted for Lucille Ball, and too restrained for a story of a woman trying to swallow her production whole if it means gaining some semblance of control.
As for the many spinning thematic plates, the political premise of Lucille being accused of communism — which she readily adheres to, but only in private — is more window dressing than something on which the film and the characters have any actual perspective. It only seems to matter when it’s the immediate topic of conversation, despite it being a major reason the cast and crew fear being cancelled (the performances suffer similarly; Kidman and Bardem rarely create a chemistry or dynamic that extends beyond the present moment). Sorkin’s previous effort, The Trial of the Chicago 7, also had malformed politics, but what it lacked in thoughtfulness, it more than made up for in raucous energy (whether Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong’s work belonged in such a serious story is another matter; at the end of the day, their weird, Lonely Island-esque performances were fun). Being the Ricardos is limp by comparison, in every way, but especially in its lead performances, which feels inexcusable given the lively pairing at its center.
At the same time, Lucille’s on-set power play is limited in its dramatic presentation. The camera doesn’t compensate for Kidman’s physical and emotional stillness with any energy or movement, so everything depends on Sorkin’s snappy dialogue. The only notable visual flourish arrives in the form of Lucille imagining how different versions of certain jokes will land — we see these play out in black and white — before she butts heads with her director and adjusts the script accordingly. This could be considered a fourth narrative timeline, one of possibility, but it’s never used to explore anything but gags, despite the emotional premise being about Lucille ruminating on her personal and professional future all at once. And so, these sequences of mentally workshopping pratfall comedy also don’t earn the somber weight conferred on them by the booming score, or by the closeups of Lucille staring pensively into space, which frame them on either side. Even the few things Sorkin gets almost right feel completely disconnected.
If the film has a saving grace, it’s the supporting pair of William Frawley (J. K. Simmons) and Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda), who play the Ricardos’ neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz. While their primary function is to comment on and react to the ongoing story — William becomes torn between his dislike of communists and his distaste for anti-communist witch hunts, while Vivian struggles with playing second fiddle to Lucille — they’re also immediately magnetic, thanks to Simmons and Arianda’s performances, which are forced, by virtue of being in Lucille and Desi’s presence, to ride a fine line between lively and subdued. Yet their radiance, and their characters’ complications, frequently bubble to the surface despite their fleeting screen time. The duo has an adversarial relationship (one that’s riotous to watch, even when it’s distasteful), but they ultimately understand each other, as a pair whose comedic purpose is to be yesterday’s news — to be the lesser Lucille and Desi.
This ends up a much more alluring intersection between the personal and the artistic than what’s presented through Kidman’s Lucille. It’s hard not to wish Being the Mertzes had been made instead, though perhaps by a filmmaker more interested in letting the camera and the performances do the talking, rather than just the words.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3drbFEn
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