Being the Ricardos

As TV's "I Love Lucy" reaches 20 million households a week in the US in the early 1950s, it's star, Lucille Ball, is fighting Communist affiliation rumors started by columnist Walter Winchell; she's also fighting with husband and co-star Desi Arnaz about his lack of marital attention and is about to reveal to the television audience that both she and her TV-counterpart, Lucy Ricardo, are "expecting". Although this handsomely-produced portrait of the legendary actress is an entertaining one, there are a myriad of timeline issues and anachronisms within the film which "I Love Lucy" purists are bound to be troubled by. There's also a hurdle in buying Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz (Bardem has Desi's Cuban-accented voice--and his flirtatious charms--down, but he's too old for the role). Kidman fares better as Lucy, proving her naysayers wrong and giving a wry, tough, courageous performance. Lucy's off-camera relationship with Vivian Vance (played by Nina Arianda) is curiously edgy despite reports throughout the years these two were the best of friends; meanwhile, codger William Frawley (J. K. Simmons) is shown to be irascible yet cogent and sharp in place of the heavy drinker Arnaz went out on a limb to have cast. I didn't care for the documentary-like framing device of the show's creators discussing the series in the present day (there's enough flashbacks and flash-forwards happening here); however, when writer-director Aaron Sorkin gets down to business, he delivers some terrifically tasty behind-the-scenes action. **1/2 from ****

I loved the series and I appreciate the fine work of Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. The accuracy can be only a detail in this chronicle of the US TV shows history and, I admitt , I do not know very much about the life of the main characters. But I am satisfied by the ball of stories used by director Aaron Sorkin for creating a realistic portrait of a period. This is the basic virtue of this film - to give a large picture of a time , in its precise details and rich significances. The bad detail - the horrible make up of Nicole Kidman , giving impression of plastic face. Like many biopics , a hommage to an epoque. Intense effort, good acting, nice reconstruction of series scenes and a decent manner to reflect the story of a not just ordinary couple.

I really wanted to like this movie! I love Nicole & Javier and I of course am an I Love Lucy fan. But this just did not work for me. I couldn't see the characters, only the actors. It felt off with everything, like a puzzle that didn't fit. Maybe I'm not an Aaron Sorkin fan? I'm not sure but this one wasn't my favorite and I couldn't finish it unfortunately.

Meandering. Boring. How can a movie about Lucy not have one laugh? For two hours I couldn't stop looking at the horrible makeup on Nicole Kidman. This is your typical biopic. And when you have Sorkin at the helm, it is going to be bloated, overwritten and plodding. There has to be a better one down the road.

Aaron Sorkin is a good TV writer and, when he has a director who can manage his diarreah of the word processor, such as David Fincher did on "Social Network", can deliver a good screenplay. However, giving this loggorheac the keys to the film kingdom (i.e. Allowing him to direct) is akin to letting a vampire loose in a blood bank. Things are going to get out of control and the viewer will soon be lost in the detritus of Sorkin's unending spew of verbiage, some of it clever, most of it compulsive, and way too much of it deadeningly repetitive. The result, for this viewer at least, was to gaspingly pull the plug about three fourths of the way through and, to mix the metaphor, come up for air. And once I was able to breathe and reflect upon what I had seen I was able to summon not one iota of interest in or sympathy for this skilled comedienne nor care whether her marriage succeeded or failed and quite honestly found Sorkin's evaluation of Ms. Ball as a great dramatic actress who could have been the equal of Bette Davis in "All About Eve" shockingly stupid. C plus.