Being The Ricardos is bitter and cold

by Kathia Woods

"I love Lucy" was an iconic television show that ran from October 1951 until May 1957.

After an underwhelming movie career, the show's star comedic rockstar Lucille Ball partnered with Cuban American nightclub performer Desi Arnaz to create the iconic show. Television was new and exciting, and "I love Lucy" became a stable television show that united families around this new medium.

As a result, "I Love Lucy" became a worldwide phenomenon due to its star's superb comic timing and inherent acting talent by Lucy Ball herself. As a child in Jamestown, New York, her aspirations for greater grandeur were fully realized.

Many didn't know that there were a lot of challenges around the show, and the funny Lucy we saw on TV was extremely serious in her day-to-day life.

This couple you see featured on Being The Ricardos is seriously fighting the network, sponsors, and co-stars to keep the show going while battling each other in a marriage that was hanging on by a thread.

Due to Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley and the show's sharp and humorous writing and good direction, these studio-set plots for the trailblazing "I Love Lucy" felt so natural and realistic.

Consequently, why does the new film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz appear blithely clueless about how many people worldwide are in love with them? Aaron Sorkin, the writer, and director of "Being the Ricardo's," lacks regard for the genius of Lucille Ball and the program that changed the landscape of television.

Sorkin is using this film to demonstrate the turmoil behind the scenes. The viewer gets a front-row seat into Lucy and Desi's challenges as a working famous married couple. We also are privy to a writing staff that was contemptuous and adversarial. Lastly, the dislikes that William Frawley and Vivian Vance (Fred and Ethel) had for one another while working on this iconic show.

My issue with the film isn't that these things aren't true — Desi was unquestionably a legendary ladies' man and philanderer, and Frawley and Vance didn't get along — but that the film is mostly about complete negativity that seemed to permeate throughout the set. These folks that gave the audience so much joy was void of it the entire film.

Sorkin hammers home his themes with ferocity throughout the film until you're drained. The negativity is further accentuated by a confusing screenplay and the main ensemble that isn't up to the rigors of playing iconic television personalities.

A couple of true-to-life plotlines are interwoven throughout the story, each adding a little life to the narrative. In the first place, there was a danger that Lucille Ball would be subjected to a witch inquiry by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during his anti-communist witch hunt in the 1950s. This was because her strict grandfather was a socialist, and she really registered to vote as a Communist in 1936, but solely to satisfy her grandfather. The way Lucy and Desi escape their dilemma is depicted with excellent artistry.

The second plotline that is managed nicely involves CBS being outraged that Lucy and Desi wanted Mrs. Ricardo to be pregnant on the show to correspond with Ball's real-life pregnancy, which they were denied. In the 1950s, married couples slept in separate beds and did not engage in sexual activity on television. In a picture that doesn't have many chuckles, the storyline about having a baby does manage to generate a few.

The film "Being The Ricardos," which is currently playing in theaters, is primarily in color, with a few black and white sequences that are based on scenes from "I Love Lucy." In this scene, Nicole Kidman is the most convincing as Lucy. Aside from that, she's too old to play Lucille in the 1950s and doesn't seem to be able to capture her off-camera attributes well. However, I enjoyed her steely approach when she was presenting Ball as someone who knew exactly what works in the world of comedy.

Javier Bardem is also too old for the role, and he doesn't pleasingly portray Arnaz. Nina Arianda as Vance and J. K. Simmons as Frawley fall short of conveying the essence of their respective characters. They are both devoid of credibility.

"Being The Ricardos" is a film that concentrates on the grotesque and the banal. There are moments when you wonder whether you're watching a film about a comic gem? Is it true that the extremely hostile "I Love Lucy" writing staff truly despised one another so much that all they did was bicker?

Sorkin's depiction of Ball and Arnaz's lives feels like it's being told by a mean-spirited teacher who doesn't want you to enjoy yourself. "Being The Ricardos" isn't a particularly entertaining film. It's an uncomfortably off-key passage. Lucy and Desi were deserving of a better life as well as film.