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Being the Ricardos (2021)
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz face a crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.
4.0 / 5
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Representation
Incluvie Movie Reviews
Josh Halpern
April 13, 2022
4.0 / 5
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'Being the Ricardos': A Match Made in TV Heaven
“I did this show so Desi and I could be together.’ Nicole Kidman’s Lucy says toward the end of Being the Ricardos. The series was a home for its star, never mind the 60 million viewers who tuned in every week. But I Love Lucy was a work of fiction that required tremendous sacrifice from its leads to the very end.
Behind the scenes simmered a highly tense early Hollywood power-couple in the Arnez’s. This was a passionate, well-publicized interracial marriage. Uncommon at the time. But Lucille Ball was not any ordinary ‘B-movie actress’ and Desi Arnaz was more than just a refugee bandleader from Cuba.
Being the Ricardos is an ode to hard work, creative genius, and adhering to one’s instincts in the face of mounting pressures and potential backlash. Nicole Kidman embodies Lucille Ball. She is determined, conveying both a warmth and a cool demeanor simultaneously to get what Lucy wants out of her actors, directors, studio executives, and husband Desi Arnaz, played with verve and panache by Javier Bardem.
It’s a dynamic, multi-layered screenplay, honed by Aaron Sorkin-who’s also the director-that uses a faux-documentary framework to introduce a 1950's workplace drama with adept, quick-witted characters and heavy stakes. Actors play real-life crew members interviewed on camera to recount specific events from one select week in the production of I Love Lucy in its second season in 1953. In this 1-week time frame, we’re confronted with at least four problems that Lucy, our central protagonist, must deal with: the direction of a particular episode’s intro, her suspicion of her husband Desi’s infidelity, her pending pregnancy and its effects on the show and the possibility of her entire professional career coming apart due to a recent news article that accuses her of being a Communist.
In addition to all of these challenges, we follow the legendary comedienne and her handlings of numerous figureheads during her time as an actor under an RKO movie studio contract and as a frustrated radio performer leading up to her early years in broadcast television.
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Movie Information
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz face a crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.
Rating:R
Genre:Drama, History
Written By:Aaron Sorkin
In Theaters:12/10/2021
Box Office:$450,000
Runtime:132 minutes
Studio:Amazon Studios, Big Indie Pictures, Escape Artists
Cast
Aaron Sorkin
Director
Nicole Kidman
Lucille Ball
Javier Bardem
Desi Arnaz
J.K. Simmons
William Frawley
Nina Arianda
Vivian Vance
Tony Hale
Jess Oppenheimer
Alia Shawkat
Madelyn Pugh
Jake Lacy
Bob Carroll Jr.
Linda Lavin
Older Madelyn Pugh
Ronny Cox
Older Bob Carroll
John Rubinstein
Older Jess Oppenheimer
Clark Gregg
Howard Wenke
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