‘Being the Ricardos’ Review: Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem Play Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz to Wry Perfection in Aaron Sorkin’s Domestic Showbiz Rouser

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Contrary to popular belief, not every piece of drama with Aaron Sorkin’s name on it has the inimitably timed, exquisitely percussive sound of I-top-you-no-I top-you combative patter known as Sorkin…

), is very much a heady helping of Sorkinese — and a beautiful illustration of what can be intoxicating about it. The entire movie is set during one pressure-cooker week during the shooting of the CBS sitcom “I Love Lucy.” It’s 1952, the show is in its second season , and it’s the most popular program in America, with 60 million viewers every Thursday night.

Just as Lucy and Desi are having a frantic round of make-up sex , a radio report drops the other shoe: Lucy has been accused, in a Walter Winchell column, of being a Communist. So far, no newspaper has picked up the story. And Lucy, whose grandfather was a Communist, claims that there’s nothing to it . But this is a time when HUAC’s power is at its greatest, and if the charge sticks, Lucy and Desi’s careers are history.

Everything that happens in “Being the Ricardos” really did happen. But it didn’t happen in the same week, or anything close to it, and Sorkin, by presenting it as if it did , has actually created a quintessential expression of the Sorkinese aesthetic. The dialogue in “Being the Ricardos” has the blunt directness, dagger wit, and perfectly cut corners of Sorkinese ­­— a sound that might be described as hardass Talmudic screwball.

Yet it’s the dance of Kidman and Bardem that gives “Being the Ricardos” its light but molten magic. I went into the movie not being able to put Nicole Kidman and Lucille Ball together in my head. But here’s how good Kidman is. As the Lucy of the sitcom, she’s perfection, nailing the squalls and pop-eyed double takes, the blaring voice, the whole way that Lucy Ricardo was goofy-clueless with an invisible trickiness — a form of passive-aggression.

 

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Great review. I has me scratching my head over the RT scores. It's like critics are watching two different films. I'm still excited about it.

“In 1999 Lachlan and Packer became close with Cruise through Cruise’s then wife, Nicole Kidman” “when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman divorced, the Murdochs came out in full support of Kidman”

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