Movie Review: Being the Ricardos

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B

A surprisingly good movie about an especially difficult week's filming of I Love Lucy. 

I admit to being very skeptical about this movie. The previews did not impress me much and I was skeptical about some of the casting. While some of my fears turned out to be true, what worked about this film really worked. First off Nicole Kidman did a surprisingly good job playing Lucillie Ball. She may not have always physically resembled her and no one has the perfect comic timing of Lucille Ball, but she nailed the voice. It was amazing just how much she can sound like Lucy. Yet she never seems to be doing an imitation of Lucy. I do feel she is a bit better in the real-life scenes than she is in the scenes in which she is recreating comedic moments from the classic sitcom (though no one could top the actual Lucille Ball in that department no matter how funny they were). Yet she is so good in those dramatic scenes, that her performance completely pulls you in. As long as I am talking about performances, J.K. Simmons is perfect as William Frawley. I love William Frawley in every movie and TV show, I have seen him in, but dang it if Simmons didn't perfect capture everything I love about that great actor. This film's script (while not completely factual) is very absorbing and smart. There are lines of dialogue that are extremely clever and the discussions about politics, sexism and racism are extremely well handled. They never feel forced or preachy but rather insightful and natural. Being about I Love Lucy this movie obviously has its fair share of humor as well. While not every joke hits perfectly, those that do are very funny. The best comedic scenes come from the staff in the writing room. The talk about a seven-year-old actor having to sign something to prove he was not a communist, especially cracked me up.

This movie does have its faults though. As well as traditional bio-pic scenes, this film also includes actual interviews with those who worked on the show. While this is not a bad idea and some of the interviews are interesting, they are not very well integrated into the movie. Sometimes they feel like they are simply interrupting the film as there is no real transition to these scenes. Instead, they simply seem to pop up out of nowhere and this is distracting. The flashbacks in this movie can also feel too forced and there is a lack of a smooth transition from the "present" to the "past." Unfortunately, Javier Bardem is miscast as Desi Arnaz. He is a great actor, but he is not Desi. This is not only due to the fact that he looks and sounds nothing like Desi, but also due to not being able to capture that instant charm Desi had, although who could.

This is far from a perfect movie yet what works very well.