Movie Review: 'Being the Ricardos' Aaron Sorkin Makes Lucy Unfunny

The talent of writer-director Aaron Sorkin is undeniable. Sorkin is a man of words, of wit, and caustic observation. I have no intention of diminishing Mr Sorkin’s talent but I have to quarrel with his choice of subjects. While Sorkin’s rat-a-tat banter and scintillating discourse on important issues is usually very welcome when providing a voice to good hearted politicians on The West Wing or when creating a recognizable version of a social media titan like Mark Zuckerberg, under the strict direction of David Fincher, in The Social Network. However, having that same style saddled onto the legend of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez feels completely out of place.

There is a deep disconnect between Sorkin’s style of wordy, fast talking, tete a tete and the fall down funny of I Love Lucy. I’m sure there are parallels between typical Sorkin characters and the staff of I Love Lucy but Sorkin’s picture of Lucille Ball, as portrayed by Nicole Kidman, is shockingly humorless, often cruel, and downright joyless. Even when she’s creating comedy, Sorkin’s Lucille Ball approaches comedy with an architect-like dryness as if she were mathematically constructing comedy that she didn’t particularly enjoy.

Indeed, a theme emerges slowly in the new Hulu drama, Being the Ricardos, of Lucy seeming to not think much of her own comedy but understanding that it makes other people laugh. The tacit argument appears to be that Lucy debased herself with a purpose, joylessly throwing herself into physical comedy with the intent of squeezing an exact amount of comedy out of each flailing bit of comic physicality. Otherwise, Lucy is a narcissistic genius doling out sharp rebukes to anyone who doesn’t fully share her vision.

Being the Ricardos takes place over a single week in the life of the show, I Love Lucy. In this week there is a great deal of drama as Lucy has recently testified in front of Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee and she risks being accused of being a Communist over a misunderstanding between herself and a late family member some 20 years earlier. As this drama is unfolding, so is drama between Lucy and her husband, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), after photos of him and another woman have been leaked to a tabloid. Desi claims the photos have been misconstrued but Lucy isn’t sure she believes him.

This also happens to be the same week that Lucy revealed she was pregnant and Desi informed CBS that they intended to portray that pregnancy on the show and have the character have a baby. CBS executives, and I Love Lucy’s executive producer, Jess Oppenheimer, played by Tony Hale, are very much opposed to the idea. They don’t believe it is appropriate to have a pregnant character on a television show. Why? It’s the 1950s and getting pregnant would imply that Lucy and Desi have sex and any hint of sex was, at the time, completely forbidden on television.

As for the show they are working on this week, the plot centers around an argument between Lucy and Desi’s neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz, actors William Frawley and Vivian Vance, played here by J.K Simmons and Nina Arianda. The Mertz’s are in an argument and Lucy makes it her mission to solve their problem for them. She’s invited Fred and Ethel to dinner individually, not telling either of them that their partner is going to be there. This leads to an argument over a chair, one specifically engineered by Lucy to bring them together.

As envisioned by Sorkin, Lucy’s unending genius requires that she have this two people, one chair gag be the most special, laugh out loud gag in human history. Lucy obsesses over the joke of Fred and Ethel trying to share the same chair before knocking each other off of said chair. She calls Fred and Ethel in the middle of the night so they can act out the gag over and over to her satisfaction. Each has to fall at the same time, the rule of three must be adhered to in how they elbow each other, it all must be blocked perfectly.

Sorkin has Lucy linger over the genius and perfection of two people falling off the same chair on opposite sides as if she were performing surgery or painting a masterpiece. It’s the kind of precious pretentiousness that Sorkin imbues in all of his geniuses, from President Bartlet on The West Wing or Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Lucy may in fact have been a similarly galaxy-brained genius but portraying Lucy like every other genius in the Sorkin canon serves only to suck the fun out of every moment of I Love Lucy, a problem for a show remembered as one of the funniest of all time.

Meanwhile, the baby subplot unfolds in moments straight out of a rejected The West Wing script. Imagine, Josh Lyman goes to someone he’s at odds with and says the President is going to do a thing. This opposing force says, we won’t allow that. Josh says, we’re doing it and you can’t stop us and here’s why. President Bartlet makes a political play behind the scenes that surprises everyone, Josh gloats, his side wins, end of subplot.

In the case of Being the Ricardos, substitute Javier Bardem’s Desi for Josh, the President of a Tobacco Company for President Bartlet, and CBS studio executives for that opposing political force and you honestly cannot tell the difference. It’s so lazy and so irksome that I hate it even more as I write about it. It’s so similar that I feel confident that I could scrub through a season of The West Wing and find this exact plot, right down to Josh doing a little dance, as Desi does, following the victory over the CBS executives.

For another good example, Lucy’s famed grape stomping episode is being planned during the time frame of Being The Ricardos. We cut to a close up of Nicole Kidman as Lucy, lost in thought. Lucy envisions the scene, herself and a matronly Italian woman, both in peasant garb. Lucy doesn’t speak Italian but recognizes that the woman is beckoning her to step into the vat of grapes. Lucy steps in and makes a face. Lucy slowly gains comic momentum, dancing around in a silly fashion. A flashback to Kidman’s Lucy thinking of the bit, she solves the punchline in a bit of divine inspiration, and her genius has saved the day.

This is all well and good, well acted by Kidman, logically laid out in Sorkin’s narrative, but at the core, this is one of the most famous scenes in television history because it is supposed to be hilariously funny and in this dry presentation, it can barely be described as mildly amusing. The presentation of the scene, the self-serious approach to comedy, ruins the spontaneity of the moment, the joy of the performance, and the essential elements of what makes this scene so iconic.

And that’s a pretty good description of Being the Ricardos in total. Sorkin has sucked all of the fun out of I Love Lucy in favor of bending the story to his style. Suddenly, Lucille Ball is talking like she’s a cast member on The West Wing and not the former most famous and beloved comedian in the world. Desi Arnez, as played by the brilliant Javier Bardem, is now yet another variation on Sorkin’s insert character, Josh Lyman from The West Wing.

Being the Ricardos is a very well crafted movie. The performances are terrific with Kidman and Bardem throwing themselves into being Lucy and Desi. And yet, because Aaron Sorkin has sucked every last moment of pleasure, every laugh, every moment of seeming joy out of a beloved comic institution, I Love Lucy, I hate this movie. I hate Being the Ricardos. This is one of the worst movies of 2021. It’s a lazy script, it’s an auto-pilot predictable, convenience laden bit of historical revisionism. And, it’s all Sorkin’s fault.

Being the Ricardos debuts on Hulu on December 10th, 2021.