Starring Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos showed its stars during a week’s production of I Love Lucy. Although the film failed to recapture the magic of its source material at times, Being the Ricardos received mostly positive reviews. However, positive reviews aside, I Love Lucy fans may be disappointed by Being the Ricardos.
I Love Lucy was a highly successful TV series and is still recognized as one of the most groundbreaking shows in television. In the early 1950s, an average of 60 million people tuned in to new episodes on Monday nights just to see what Lucy and Ricky were up to that week. To put it mildly, it was a national phenomenon.
In noting the success of I Love Lucy, it’s important to understand that it was a comedy and sitcom. The meaning of the former word is self-explanatory, but the latter deserves some attention. In a sitcom, there’s drama, problems and all of the things that make for good television, but in most cases, everything is resolved by the end of the episode. I Love Lucy perfectly embodied that idea as it sought to portray the perfect reality of home life. Thus, I Love Lucy couldn’t have been further from what today’s reality television looks like with its constant, cultivated drama.
Being the Ricardos, however, is much more akin to a modern reality show. The film’s premise was to give a real-life look at I Love Lucy’s production, and that meant drama because much of what happened in front of the cameras was not what happened behind them.
In Being the Ricardos, Lucy was accused of being a communist; Lucy put Vivian Vance (Ethel) down for the sake of her own self-esteem; Vivian regularly fought with William Frawley (Fred). William was an alcoholic. Desi (Ricky) repeatedly cheated on Lucy. All of those things were true and part of the film for the sake of accuracy. Unfortunately, though, that meant Being the Ricardos’ themes involved bickering, cheating, fighting and lots of language.
Given that Being the Ricardos was rated R, there’s no way that anyone expected it to have the same tone as I Love Lucy. Nevertheless, the vibe was still kind of shocking. So, maybe, in this case, it would just be better to “not meet your heroes” because the I Love Lucy characters were a bit different from the people when the cameras were off. So, for those wanting to see what Lucille Ball and the rest of the cast were really like, then, by all means, watch Being the Ricardos. However, for those who want to live in 1950s nostalgia, don’t burst the bubble by watching Sorkin’s new film.
