Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem can’t act around the Sorkinisms of Being The Ricardos
Finally, I Love Lucy gets the Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip treatment!
Film Reviews Nicole Kidman
Does Aaron Sorkin love the storied and colorful history of classic television, as implied by the earnest wonder of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip? Or does Aaron Sorkin actually just love telling audiences that a bunch of years ago, something really important happened, as explicitly stated by multiple characters from Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip? Being The Ricardos, which depicts a Sorkinized week in the life of TV legends Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), has evidence of both passions, but one thing is certain: This is a movie that will enrapture audiences, so long as those audiences are populated with characters from Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.
Maybe it’s unfair to repeatedly bring up Sorkin’s greatest boondoggle (or at least one of his top two). After all, Being The Ricardos follows up an Oscar-nominated Netflix hit and a gambling drama, neither of which has anything to do with the glory of producing a network television series.
Even Ricardos, which is obviously in Sorkin’s Paley Center For The Media sweet spot, tries to expand his usual scope. The basic structure is classic Sorkin, following Ball as she copes with brewing accusations of communism, suspicions of Arnaz’s infidelity, and fighting executives and sponsors over working her real-life pregnancy into I Love Lucy—all while haranguing her various writers, directors, and co-stars to make sure that week’s episode of the megahit sitcom meets her exacting standards of quality.
Yet Sorkin does deviate from his comfort zone to include snippets of (fake) documentary-style talking-head interviews, offering historical and retrospective context to this period in the Ball/Arnaz relationship. And more prominently, intimate flashback scenes take a less zippy approach to the origins of the couple’s collaboration.
The courtship of Lucy and Desi is melancholy, isolated as it is from backstage hustle, bustle, and banter, and suffused with the frustrations Ball feels as she’s told, essentially, that she’s not enough of a looker to make it in the movies. This is potentially interesting stuff, but it’s dramatized without much invention or zip; most of the information these scenes convey could be surmised from dialogue, one of those cases where maybe telling instead of showing would be preferable. The real purpose of the flashback scenes is to help further reconcile two iconic real-life “characters” with the extremely talented actors who don’t quite match them in age, style, or physicality.
Despite the hemming and hawing that followed the casting of the decidedly non-rubberfaced Kidman as Ball, don’t we want to be transported into a bizarre reverie where some part of Kidman becomes some part of Ball (preferably without the aid of mirthless technical impersonation) while revealing a hidden side to the beloved performer? That’s not exactly what happens in Being The Ricardos, though it’s hard to blame any of the actors, especially when Kidman comes close to pulling it off. The movie sidesteps some impersonation issues by portraying Ball as a different sort of comic dynamo off-camera, more acerbic than her on-camera reliance on physical comedy lets on. Considering how many other recent Kidman roles have her speaking in a sorrowful whisper, it’s admittedly a kick to see her fire off brassy, bossy zingers opposite Arrested Development alumni like Alia Shawkat (playing Ball’s best writer) and Tony Hale (playing her harried showrunner).
Kidman can’t, however, fully act around the distracting makeup job, or find many opportunities to burrow underneath the rigid surfaces of Sorkin’s favorite type of story: where an innately talented and correct person argues for something seemingly impossible over and over, and is repeatedly told it can’t happen… until it finally does, vindicating the hardheaded genius. Here, Ball is arguing for her on-screen pregnancy, against giving credence to gossipy stories about her political affiliations, for giving Arnaz a more prominent producing credit, and against the staging of an I Love Lucy scene she feels quietly but clearly insults her audience’s intelligence. The mix of high and low stakes is compelling—until the movie flattens them all into the same basic, righteous argument, leaving the suspicion that a comedy titan has been refashioned in Sorkin’s image.
The thorniest complication here is supposed to be something Ball feels less certain about: her husband. Being The Ricardos portrays Arnaz as his own manner of genius, somehow both riding Ball’s coattails (CBS pursued her, a flashback notes, based on her radio success with a show that did not co-star her real-life husband) and steering her career from that unlikely vantage. Bardem does introduce some ambiguity and unpredictability into the proceedings; his charisma operates independently from the world of sniping comedy writers.
He and Kidman give the movie an extra (and sometimes frankly strange) bit of pizzazz, and Sorkin seems to sense it, recognizing that the stars imperfectly but eye-catchingly impersonating other stars shine are big for his lofty yet closed universe. He introduces them accordingly, with the rare Sorkin visual flourish that goes beyond the TV-ready walk-and-talk: In their first scene, the actors’ faces are kept off-screen, then out of focus, embracing each other passionately until Ball overhears a radio broadcast insinuating about her past in the Communist Party, stopping their passion cold.
That accusation is where the really important stuff comes in, and while that conflict is clearly supposed to occupy Ball’s foreground with her marital issues percolating in the background, Sorkin can’t resist drowning out the latter with the former. He even trots out a token principled conservative, here the cranky and hard-drinking I Love Lucy actor William Frawley (J.K. Simmons), who hates commies but hates the HUAC more! The personal behind-the-scenes material between Ball and her staff hits a little harder—which still leaves this supposed dual biography feeling oddly centerless.
The Lucy-Desi material that should be at the heart of the story never really pays off, as if it’s wandered off and found another, secret movie to inhabit. Maybe that film wouldn’t be any better than those made-for-TV biopic melodramas like Hemingway & Gellhorn—but Being The Ricardos never really has a chance to prove itself. By compressing a lot of fascinating dimensions of the couple’s work and life into a single week, it gives them urgency in the moment, then waves them away with only a hint of the lingering complications that informed their real-life future. In the end, it’s Sorkin’s show that must go on.
218 Comments
I get the feeling you don’t like Sorkin.
Y’all need to get on the same page.
https://jezebel.com/being-the-ricardos-will-embarrass-you-for-ever-doubting-1848168398
Another good example of Jezebel contradicting the AV Club.
Why do they need to get on the same page?
Because a large percentage of the readers here have no comprehension how a media organization works and are happy to make it someone else’s problem instead of learning something.
They literally have different URLs so they can’t be on the same page!
Good question. They’re different sites and different writers.
I’ve seen this sort of dumb take a lot in the comments on more politics-focused sites, and I think it’s totally ridiculous that someone can think it’s somehow hypocritical for the same site to publish say, an article castigating Biden’s foreign policy, and on another day, an article by someone else defending it. I think they’re the sort of person who mostly consumes media that has a very clear editorial line, most likely something on the far right or far left, and they assume that other outlets also speak with one unified voice. But it’s even crazier when you’re talking about pop-culture/entertainment sites, because why on earth would they have an editorial opinion on everything. I mean, a news site being identified as liberal or conservative or pro or anti foreign intervention or for or against more government involvement in the economy or whatever is normal, but a site having an editorial stance on Aaron Sorkin movies? I’m sorry, but I really doubt there’s ANY site anywhere that brings new hires on and says, “Oh by the way, here’s a list of actors, writers and directors that we like and here’s a list of ones we dislike,” let alone, “Before you get started, you’d better bone up on which upcoming projects the site is and is not skeptical of.” If you think anything like that goes on or should go on, at any site, let alone across separate entities that share ownership, you’re pretty much insane.
Ah yes, another bizarre and embarrassing instance of one writer for a website not being in lockstep agreement with another writer for another website, who have the same parent company and absolutely no other editorial overlap. Weird!!
One thing I wonder is what’s the most an A.V. Club review(doesn’t have to be for a movie) has ever been out of step with the critical consensus.
Oh, man. The MOST? Out of the whole 20+ years of the site? Hard to say. The stuff that sticks out most to me is never really a pan in the face of great reviews (or vice versa), but the endless comments our Best Movies of the Year lists will get for not including some popular favorite that got a good-but-not-great review from the site. Or, the Where’s Blade Runner 2049 Award.
There’s always that one guy who insists the Star Wars prequels are good
When they let Frank Fisticuffs review “Hillary: The Movie” and he pronounced it the culminating achievement of human civilization.
How did the critics feel about that sweet Laurel Canyon sound?
Roughly a B+ album
…OF COCK
wistfully staring into the middle distance
Why do you wonder that? What would be the point of that answer?
Curiosity.
Sure. Agendaless ol’ curiosity.
What agenda do you think I have?
Underscoring how “wrong” the AV Club reviews are in the context of reviews outside of the site.
I don’t think unpopular=wrong.
Underscoring how “unpopular” the AV Club reviews are in the context of reviews outside of the site.Either way, curiosity it ain’t. It’s the powder charge in the musket of whatever shot you want to take at the site.
Your refusal to believe that my original comment meant exactly what it said reminds me of people who think everything’s a “dog whistle.”
Given how quickly, frequently, and vehemently AV Club commentariat throw shit at the site, you’ll have to forgive my skepticism about your intentions.And FWIW, it’s sort of amazing how many people DO use dog whistles and PRETEND they don’t.
I was thinking about how often other commenters criticize the site and wondering why you’re going after me considering how many commenters criticize the site a lot more than I do.
You aren’t the first, you won’t be the last. And I’m not being nearly as aggro towards you as I have been towards others who I thought were being shittier. Passive-aggressive leading questions are a peeve and I smelled one in your post.
There’s a commenter who keeps accusing me of “JAQing off”, so people assuming benign questions must have hidden bad motives is a peeve of mine.
Ah yes, sarcasm, done as a response to the notably and constantly shifting variations, opinions, and contradictions of viewpoints that get houses under one roof. Behold, G/O Media, where every aspect of something is so widely reported and varying that they contain no real identity or firm stance at all. But that’s ok, the commenters don’t vary much either.My point was that AV Club stirred the pot on doubting Nicole Kidman—“hemming and hawing” as they called it, specifically commenting on her face, in which commenters saw an open window to throw their mass amounts of embarrassing criticisms. This amounted to the top comment on the cited article of this review stating “I do not get why, from the jump, the AV Club has been fixated on this casting not working.” Again, this was said in response to the AV Club focusing solely on Kidman’s “non-rubberface” being in the Uncanny Valley.So excuse me for pointing out and scolding AV Club for doing the one thing that Jezebel rightfully call them out for (although indirectly). Having a different opinion is fine and all, because here we are, having them, but having a different opinion about the shape of a person’s face isn’t something you can just “agree to disagree on” as if everyone has the right to insult everyone and we just gotta be cool with that. Because obviously, that unless you’re a sociopath, it’s not always the right thing to do.
The length of your response betrays your inability to find a coherent point to make.
i take issue with your assertion that people don’t have ‘the right’ to insult someone’s face. everyone has the right to make fun of anyone for any reason. we’re all making fun of you, right now.
“everyone has the right to make fun of anyone for any reason”
So you’d make fun of a black person for having black skin and being brutalized by the police? Or a woman who can’t afford tampons? Or how about burn victims? I happen to be one, and find that most criticisms of the face are uninventive, uncolorful, often moronic, and so I tend to ramble about stupid it is to voice those insults. No regrets though, so make fun all you like, it’s anticipated on this site because anonymity allows everyone to be the assholes they always dreamed of. Why you would dream of being an asshole is between you and your maker.
So make fun of everyone. Cool rule, I suppose, so you just keep doing you. But thumbs down for not understanding inherent boundaries in criticisms. Then again, this is all anonymous keyboard clacking, so who cares about what you think about what I think about what others think?
look, if your point is ultimately ‘i don’t like when people are mean, especially when they make fun of someone’s face, because i am a burn victim’ that tracks and i appreciate you explaining why it was such a trigger.what you also see to be saying is people shouldn’t be ALLOWED to make fun of nicole kidman’s face, in particular in a review, which i think is wrong-headed. everyone is allowed to say whatever they want. i’m not advocating for racist or sexist or ableist thoughts, but as much as it sucks people are within their rights to have them.
i’m not saying you have to agree with those things or stay quiet, but when you start talking about who has ‘the right’ to say something and who doesn’t i get a little put off. and i do find it baffling that you expect some singularity in opinion between different publications that are only related by parent company. do you get mad when vanity fair and the new yorker have different takes? they’re both owned by conde nast.
Are people making fun of Nicole Kidman’s (obviously very conventionally attractive) face, or are they saying, “Nicole Kidman doesn’t look much like Lucille Ball, and the way they’ve made her up is unconvincing?” Because one of those things is shitty, and the other is not.
TL;DR – One publication reporting on something so many times (focusing on mostly one thing) to a point where their sister publication writes about how wrong it was to focus on that one thing, is an inconsistency. This has nothing to do with having different opinions on the film, but more so about one of the things they focused on when voicing that opinion.“Are people making fun of Nicole Kidman’s (obviously very conventionally attractive) face, or are they saying, “Nicole Kidman doesn’t look much like Lucille Ball, and the way they’ve made her up is unconvincing?” People were making fun of her face for looking “weird” in general, which had little to do with the movie.I suppose I shot myself in the foot by not providing an abstract of the stance I was trying to take, until I had a good person-to-person discussion about it. When I say this site suffers inconsistencies, it has little to do with reviewers agreeing with each other to give a form a media the same kind of review or grade, but more so with what they said that would later be recognized as an inconsistent practice.It’s complicated, so I’ll draw a comparison. If People magazine published an article that called Eminem “homophobic”, only to have Entertainment Weekly come out with an article a week later saying “It’s wrong to call Eminem a homophobe, because he isn’t one.” Then one could easily point to People magazine and the overall corporation for having inconsistencies in their opinions. Essentially, if People magazine bullies a celebrity to the point to where a publication under the same company comes out to say “stop the bullying” then those news sources are essentially at odds with each other, right? Plainly, I find this to be annoying.So when Kidman was cast, the AV Club latched onto calling her “uncanny” with instruction to “try not to get too distracted by how weird everyone looks” and saying that she was “looking like an uncanny valley version of Ball” which are criticisms that pretty much no other biopic has had to go through in recent memory. While these mentions are indeed small, it awakened a bunch of commenters to state their own views of Kidman’s face in ways that had nothing to do with the movie. Pretty much every AV Club article about this movie referenced the backlash to Kidman being cast solely on how she didn’t look like Lucille Ball and the mass amount of insults that were thrown her way… Essentially, Kidman, who barely uses social media, had so many people throwing around rude criticisms of her face (not just the make up or anything, literally just commenting on her face), that she had to address it. AV Club saw fit to reference this every time they spoke about the film, obviously knowing that this was a thing they shouldn’t let anyone forget or move on from, even though their stance shifted to being “Kidman comes close to pulling it off.” But still, then Jezebel made a good point to state that everyone who focused on just the facial aspect of Kidman’s performance should feel embarrassed. Well, from my train of thought, AV Club was one of those entities that should then feel embarrassed for their recurring coverage of Kidman’s face as it compares to Lucille Ball. They never let it go, and to that effect, here I am scolding them for this inconsistency.AV Club: Nicole Kidman sure looks weird as Lucille Ball.
Jezebel: The people who focused on how weird Kidman looks were wrong.This is why I said y’all need to get on the same page. I don’t care if you have a different stance or disagreement on the film. I understand that completely. But in practice, one of the most common things that was spoken about in the coverage of the film (Kidman’s face) became inconsistent with other publications to the point that it’s almost like they’re having a back and forth with each other. And it’s almost as if part of the Jezebel article could be posted as a comment on this one, or any of the other ones by the AV Club. Plus, this isn’t the first time I’m noticing it.
You need to revisit the meaning of tl;dr.
Why? The TL;DR part is just the first paragraph and sums up most of everything after that point. Basically, if you don’t want to read my whole point, just read the first part. It’s 2 sentences. Then you can ignore the rest.
You didn’t really have a point. Okay.
Framing multiple points of view under the G/O ownership as not having an “identity or firm stance” makes about as much sense as chastising the ’90s-era critics at People and Entertainment Weekly for not having a “firm stance” on a movie or an album. If you read carefully, you might even see that my review praises Nicole Kidman’s performance, and takes some issue with the weird, distracting makeup job—not “the shape of her face.”
I absolutely would chastise the ’90s-era critics at People and Entertainment Weekly for not having a “firm stance” on a movie or an album. Especially if they were the ones who criticized an album like Eminem’s “Slim Shady LP” only to come out and state later that it’s one of his best, and one of the best rap records of all time.I still take issue with how AV Club handled the casting of Kidman prior to this to the point that you had to mention it with an hyperlink to another AV Club article, which references another article about Kidman’s casting choice in another AV Club article. Not everyone ignores or forgets the train of criticisms that AV Club started up before walking back what they said on this subject, which oddly is pretty much what the Jezebel article was about. I see you trying to state that “varying opinions is good” but when one of the other viewpoints under the same roof comes out to embarrass another viewpoint, then everything starts to feel disjointed.That’s my opinion of it.
Well, whether you can abide critics changing their minds about something is a separate hang-up. I’m talking about finding it “inconsistent” that (just as a hypothetical example), Entertainment Weekly gave the Eminem album a positive review and People gave it a negative one. You can’t hire critics and say “make sure you don’t contradict this other person at a magazine owned by the same parent company.” Absolute madness, and for what? To strengthen some imaginary connection between publications that share an owner?And even within the same site, you can’t hire critics to agree with Newswire posts. I review movies (and occasionally TV shows or records) on a freelance basis. I don’t write posts that comment on casting news or box office or whatever. (Though of course I do sometimes have opinions on these things.) The solution is either to have no one express any opinion about anything that might later inform a review (which isn’t my call, but isn’t especially practical), or to assign critics based on who agrees with some already-established Newswire post. Neither of these make a lot of sense to me. So you might have to learn to live with the nagging contradiction for however much time that the A.V. Club uses film critics!If Jezebel thinks the stuff about Kidman’s casting on their sister site was bad or ill-informed, let them say so!
Agreeing with Newswire posts should be considered a potential disqualification in any critic (or human being).
All right, settle down.
You should just let it go with guy.
“And even within the same site, you can’t hire critics to agree with Newswire posts.”People have come and gone over the years, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers the classic AV Club move of posting an interview with someone hyping up their new movie/show on Wednesday and then a C- review on Friday.
But why should having an interview determine the quality of a movie/show?
It doesn’t! It was just a mildly amusing thing that would happen. The interview would be fun and positive (as they should be) and then you’d get a review calling the movie/show shit.
You’re saying the ownership or upper management of a group of publications (or even one publication) is supposed to tell its critics what they’re to respond favorably to? That’s just wrong, I’m sorry. Critics are only of value if they have independent opinions.
On top of all the other things that people are piling on you for here, I’d like to point out that “consistency” is highly overrated as a virtue. Someone who says one thing and does another is a hypocrite, yes, but someone who changes their mind about something is not necessarily a bad thing, and neither is an outlet that publishes dissenting viewpoints. The only supposed virtue that’s more overrated than consistency is loyalty, which many people take to mean “You are required to both like and support anyone you have ever agreed with, considered a friend, or are related to, even if they’ve engaged in reprehensible behavior.”
I would like my doctor to be consistent.Just sayin. Consistency IS good, in particular situations.
I see what you’re saying, but then again, wouldn’t it be better for you to have a doctor who keeps up to date with all the latest medical knowledge and updates treatments accordingly?
…. not seeing how that goes against consistency. Consistency is not the same thing as intransigence.
So excuse me for pointing out and scolding AV Club for doing the one thing that Jezebel rightfully call them out for
::Yaawwwwwwwnnnnn…::Oh, I’m sorry, Brofessor_Cain! Where you not done hectoring us yet with your obviously golden, beyond-reproach judgment…?Wake me up when you’re finished.
I once watched this old television program called “Siskel and Ebert at the Movies” in which two film critics would frequently disagree with each other…despite being on the same show! It was madness.
I saw the same thing with Statler and Waldorf! JK, those dudes are always on the same grumpy old man page.
How dare people have different opinions!
But they’re different people/websites.
what point do you think you’re making?
Jezebel is a terrible site
Bless your heart.
if your intent was to embarrass yourself, full marks
Why would they need to?JEZEBEL obviously found something to love in Being the Ricardos that Hassenger didn’t — as did a scriptwriting classmate of mine who sent around an e-mail praising it to the skies. Me, between STUDIO 60, THE NEWSROOM and The Social Network I find I no longer have time for Aaron Sorkin’s tech-hating Kennedy-era liberalism, but obviously others still do….
I don’t think you’re a real brofessor…
“Kidman roles have her speaking in a sorrowful whisper, it’s admittedly a kick to see her fire off brassy, bossy zingers”she’s always been a fantastic comedic actress, even her recent role in Nine Perfect Strangers(accent aside) relied on her leaning into a lot of humour which I think reviewers interpreted incorrectly as prestige. If anything, this movie sounds like it reintroduces Ball to a new generation who might not equate her with the trailblazer she was.
Kidman’s looks and the way she carries herself make her perfect for reproachfully cutting people down.
I’m actually fan of Bewitched, where she revives a sitcom role and does great with it. I’m thinking more of her recent stuff, which has tended toward the more serious — though admittedly this might be me having watched Big Little Lies season 1 but not Nine Perfect Strangers. She’s also funny and zany and Moulin Rouge! (in between the heartbreaking stuff). She can do it all!
Yes, she surely is a force, the camp is definitely there in Nine Perfect Strangers even if the story is lacking, but I’m sure that return to zany fun is great to see again. Also Just Go With It is worth it just for her scenes.
Just Go With It is one of those roles where you kind of want to congratulate Kidman on just deciding to take a vacation in Hawai’i paid for by Adam Sandler, and then it turns out she csan even make Dave Matthews funny.
Try sorrowfully whispering “But Ricky, I wanna be in the Babaloo Show!”
It’s not that easy.
Now that you mention it, I’m surprised some galaxy-brained director hasn’t tried to create a dead-straight dramatic version of “I Love Lucy.”
Her best role is in To Die For, and she’s hilarious in that.
Is being “decidedly non-rubberfaced” good?
I mean, if we were discussing any of these people’s actual lives, my reviews would be twice as long and half as interesting.
What’s half of zero? LOL i kid
I’d probably read them.
You know what, stupid Kinja screwed up my comment — that was supposed to be a response to the note about Sorkin being a privileged scap in real life. My intended response here is that “decided not rubberfaced” is not intended as a statement of value, or even necessarily a comment on Kidman’s life—just her performance style.
Ah, ok. Some of these folks seem to think it’s about plastic surgery.
I think that’s a euphemism for bad face job, if which Nicole has
No, it’s a point about Nicole Kidman’s acting style versus Lucille Ball’s. Lucy had a rubber face, meaning that part of the fun of watching her do physical comedy was all the wild ways she could contort her facial expressions. Kidman can’t, or at least doesn’t, do that.
Considering the number of plastic surgery Kidman has probably received, there actually may be a significant amount of rubber in that non-rubber face…
yeah, that seems to be the gist.
And lots of botox.
Do you have any proof *at all* of this? I ask because her appearance does not seem to have changed in the way that surgery tends to look. Without makeup she looks just as attractively aged as her ex Tom Cruise. Which is to say way better than other people her age but still reasonably natural. Your comments sound like you’re the kind of person who calls it Hollyweird.
Well, considering I am not her doctor or beautician or aesthetician or publicist or her husband Keith, no, I have no proof of this. I’m sure it’s possible she’s been able to avoid the knife, but it just seems highly unlikely. In both The Undoing and Nine Perfect Strangers, her face just seems not very natural. But hey, to each his or her own…
She has admitted to using Botox but that’s it. Look at this side by side from 2007 and 2017. I mean… There are very obvious differences. Again, she has been blessed, just as her ex has, with extremely fortunate genes.Add to these genes the wonders of a highly paid, professional film/TV makeup artist and…
Well, “indecisively non-rubberfaced” is not anything to aspire to.
yeah, I guess.
Sadly this is about the least surprising review ever. Can Sorkin even help himself at this point?
I’m not interested in this movie, but almost every movie he’s ever written and/or directed has been well-regarded by critics and audiences.
https://www.metacritic.com/person/aaron-sorkin?filter-options=moviesSo I imagine he sees no need to help himself.
Adam Sandler and Kevin James movies are considered successful too because they make a lot of money. Doesn’t mean they’re good though.
Or does Aaron Sorkin actually just love telling audiences that a bunch of years ago, something really important happened, as explicitly stated by multiple characters from Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip?That and he’s a scab who crossed the picket line during the 2008 Writer’s Strike and has used his wealth to get out of multiple possession charges with nothing but a slap on the wrist when so many people who don’t have the resources he does have gotten decades in jail for similar charges under the system he benefits from and sees no reason to change.
While making films and shows ostensibly about how much he loves justice and advocates for the people!
It’s not up there with strikebreaking, but the whole “Internet Girl” anecdote just sums him up so well to me.
What “Internet Girl”?
I could basically except the whole article, but to summarize, Sorkin was an absolute dick to a reporter from The Globe and Mail in a press conference, at one point calling her “internet girl”. Some highlights:““my first question starts, “I watched the pilot twice … “ But I don’t
get to the question part because Sorkin looks as if he wants to say
something. I invite him to do so, and he asks, “Because you liked it so
much the first time, or because you didn’t understand it the first
time?””““Listen here, Internet
girl,” he says, getting up. “It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or
pick up a newspaper once in a while.” I’m not sure how he’s forgotten
that I am writing for a newspaper; looking over the publicist’s
shoulder, I see that every reporter is from a print publication (do not
see: Drew Magary). I remind him. I say also, factually, “I have a New York Times subscription and an HBO subscription. Any other advice?”He
looks surprised, then high-fives me. Being not a person who high-fives
or generally makes physical contact with interview subjects, I look more
surprised.“I’m sick
of girls who don’t know how to high-five,” he says. He makes me try to
do it “properly,” six times.”
I had to look it up:https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/how-to-get-under-aaron-sorkins-skin-and-also-how-to-high-five-properly/article4363455/Relevant quote near the end.
It’s not just that Aaron Sorkin loves to lionize things that happened a long time ago. He has a particular neoliberal view of American institutions that presents working within the system as the superior method of social change. The movements presented in Chicago 7 were treated with either casual foolishness or outright contempt.It’s like he wanted us to cheer for the defendants but not for their politics.
You know who’s a great writer? Aaron Sorkin.You know who’s kind of a shitty director? Aaron Sorkin.
He hit a home run 20 years ago. That’s about it. He’s the equivalent of the aging high school quarterback.
Hi, Mrs. Sorkin!
Like a reverse Shyamalan
Yeah. And it tells you a lot about how people watch movies and what they value. And it kind of confirms my theory that people key into writing much more than direction or visual storytelling.
Funny you say that. I found it really interesting that a running (very, very minor) plot point is everyone thinks the director is a hack.
“that she’s not enough of a looker to make it in the movies”I have no idea if that’s what kept her movie career from taking off, but if it was that’s ridiculous. Lucille Ball was beyond gorgeous in her youth. I think the problem was more that they tried to make her into a dramatic actress and that obviously wasn’t where her talent was. “more acerbic than her on-camera reliance on physical comedy lets on”Well, yeah. She had a bawdy sense of humor in real life. One of her most famous quotes about Desi was: “The best thing about that Cuban prick was that Cuban prick.”
That struck me as strange too, especially since Ball was 40 when I Love Lucy first went on the air, and it seems a lot more likely that producers, etc., would have been more concerned with her age being a hindrance to box office than her looks specifically.
Damn, that’s a great line.
She definitely did, but I can’t find a source for that quote.
I can’t say this movie looks all that interesting to me, and Amazon is one of the only streaming services I don’t subscribe to, so there’s a good chance I won’t see this. But it does seem like Sorkin has reached the point where his approval rating with critics is somewhere south of chlamydia, and he’s become such a villain in the eyes of many that I don’t know how much of a fair hearing he gets any more.I do sincerely appreciate Jesse acknowledging that it’s probably unfair to keep bringing up Studio 60 (Jesse’s a good egg, even when I disagree with him), but I think that is illustrative of the point. 15 years ago Sorkin made a TV show that wasn’t very good. It lasted a single season, got caustic reviews, was cancelled quickly and made no impact on the broader culture. There are no “Studio 60 was actually awesome” hot take think pieces, no one is trying to reboot the show — it’s totally dead. People who hated it won, comprehensively. And yet to this day you can go on Twitter and see critics gleefully tweeting “Your little brother is standing in the middle of Afghanistan!” like it’s the height of humor.
Trial of the Chicago 7 has 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for Best Picture.
And I wish critics bagged on it more. The historical inacuracies because of Sorkin needing to insert his Sorkin-ness ruined the film for me
actually the show had a huge impact as a punchline. arguably has had more cultural impact than 30 rock in that regard. it happens!
arguably has had more cultural impact than 30 rock in that regard. I disagree. One cutaway gag from 30 Rock has had more impact than anything from Studio 60.
Studio 60 was a punchline on 30 Rock. Multiple times! Once in a scene with Sorkin!But it’s fair to say that the Studio 60 jokes are (rightfully) falling out of fashion. It’s basically forgotten now and anyone even making jokes about it needs some newer material at this point. Let’s move on. Not because it’s not funny, but just because it’s obvious, it’s been said a million times and it’s really friggin’ old now.
to be clear i’m not making the argument, but one could!
You’re right, we need to spend more time making fun of the Bin Laden moment of the Newsroom.
I can’t believe Jeff Daniels and Sam Waterston agreed to even act in that mess of a scene.
Ha I was actually thinking about the moment on the plane.
I forgot about that one. That was idiotic.
Oh my god, I’d never seen any of The Newsroom – was it all like that? It’s like a Hallmark movie
I mean I think the point of the review is that a lot of the problems that plagued that show plague this movie as well
As an SNL fan, Studio 60 really sticks in my craw.
I never understood why SNL refused to ever stage a Gilbert and Sullivan cold open. Cowards.
I guess I’m the one person who liked Studio 60. Yeah, the show-within-the-show wasn’t very funny, but, then, neither was SNL.
I liked Studio 60 too. It wasn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it enough to stick with it.
I too liked it. People hating TV shows is weird. I mean, it’s possible to dislike something, and not have to tell everyone in the world how much you dislike it right?
As a fan of television in general, Studio 60 really sticks in my craw.
I guess if you need an example to illustrate all of Sorkin’s worst impulses rolled into one package, Studio 60 beautifully encapsulates “bad Sorkin”.
There are no “Studio 60 was actually awesome” hot take think piecesNor should there be.
I think Sorkin is like M Night Shyamalan, he’s capable of delivering every now and then and that is always celebrated but his signature style gets really tiresome, repetitive and formulaic when the material isn’t there.
Bit of a different take on this other G/O site, Jezebel, that might change your mind. Different writer; opinion.https://jezebel.com/being-the-ricardos-will-embarrass-you-for-ever-doubting-1848168398
People really seem to like his version of To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway.
“Studio 60…” was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me and I thought “Newsroom” was actually pretty decent (if heavy handed) but I don’t understand the almost universal critical disdain for Sorkin.
I like Sorkin more than most these days, and haven’t seen this yet, but unless Jesse’s completely off with his description (and I doubt that he is), I don’t see how you can talk about Being the Ricardos without Studio 60 coming up. One problem with Studio 60—which came at a time when many of us didn’t know that “bad” was something Sorkin could do—is that while Sorkin’s often a funny writer, he doesn’t seem to get comedy in a larger sense, particularly not the technical, 5+ jokes per minute comedy of traditional sitcoms and sketch shows. The show kept on telling us that the protagonists’ supposedly cutting edge comedy was important, which was hard to believe, since it most of it wasn’t very funny.The other big Studio 60 problem was that Sorkin’s superpower—his main big skill as a writer—is that he can take a topic and find an entertaining way to say “This thing you might think is stupid, trivial, or silly is actually very important, and here’s why.” One weakness of that superpower is that he applies it at roughly the same intensity each time, so Abby Hoffman, Facebook, a fictional athlete breaking a sports record on Sports Night, and life or death decisions made by the President of the United States all wind up being presented as roughly equivalent in importance, which is really rough when the thing you’re saying is important is unfunny sketches about America’s ongoing culture wars.Ideally, Being the Ricardos should be an ideal way for Sorkin to go back to Studio 60 land (behind the scenes of a comedy show, a place he apparently wants to be very badly) and right the things Studio 60 got wrong. Making a period piece about Lucille Ball should eliminate both of Studio 60’s big problems, since Ball was indisputably funny, and her story should narrow his focus from random culture war issues of the week to some concrete issues about historical race issues and women’s roles in media. If it doesn’t, that’s a real bummer.
The problem with way too many “your brother’s in the middle of Afghanistan” jokes is that they didn’t leave enough room to mock the idea of that same old fart dad being so apathetic about showbiz, and so antipathetic towards comedy, that he’d never even heard of “Who’s On First.”
The Newsroom curdled a lot of favor that he had because it displayed his main shtick—the convincing sanctimonious speech poorly, but even that got multiple seasons. Some of his material fades (Molly’s Game), but he gets plenty of praise still. Social Network, Steve Jobs, and most recently The Trial of the Chicago 7 all get more praise than not. Seems to me he’s properly rated instead of south of chlamydia. (Actually, I think he’s still kind of overrated, but there you go.)
I think part of it is that Studio 60 retroactively shed a light on the cornier, self-important parts of Sorkin’s wider body of work. Easy to be wide-eyed at an idealized liberal version of the White House, but once you see the same approach taken in Studio 60, Sorkin’s Sorkining around becomes easier to mock in general. The growing general dissatisfaction with his kind of mealymouthed liberal/centrism just adds fuel to it.
Mealy-mouthed isn’t a work I’d use to describe Sorkin.
Yeah fair – poor word choice. More, middle-of-the-road by contemporary political tastes, but indeed emphatic.
Pretty harsh on chlamydia, aren’t you?
Nothing is best avoided more than a Sorkin product, save A Few Good Men.
Yet
Sorkin does deviate from his comfort zone
Oh good!
to include snippets of (fake)
documentary-style talking-head interviews, offering historical and
retrospective context to this period in the Ball/Arnaz relationship.
Oh no!
So to summarize: a potentially interesting and character elucidating story of a marriage and creative partnership is overtaken by Sorkin’s familiar, trite political drama, and the compressed timeline doesn’t serve any one of the big themes about Lucy, Desi, and their work and lives? Well, I still want to see this and I’ll try to ignore how one of our great actresses doesn’t at all look like her subject.
I guess we’ll have to hear about Debra Messing from here to eternity. Sigh.
It seemed petty to note in the review, but I would take Nicole Kidman’s Lucy over a Debra Messing Lucy any day, on the general principle that it always better to cast Nicole Kidman over Debra Messing.
Messing would only be capable of playing Lucy Ricardo. Lucille Ball was far more serious and dilligent than Messing can play.
Counterpoint: anything Debra Messing had starred in other than Will & Grace shows she can play Lucille Ball (and not just Lucy Ricardo).Okay maybe not Garfield.
it always better to cast Nicole Kidman over Debra Messing.We shall call this “Hassenger’s Constant”.
Is that where you put a female celebrity in a box and never know if she died in there or not?
No, that’s Vegas
Agreed. Petty.
I don’t think this movie is going to be talked about for an eternity. Maybe two more weeks.
If they were doing a “Live in Front of a Studio Audience” re-enactment of I Love Lucy, Messing would probably be a fair bet.But Lucille Ball wasn’t Lucy Ricardo and the fact that another actress doesn’t get that is odd.
If they were doing a “Live in Front of a Studio Audience” re-enactment of I Love Lucy, Messing would probably be a fair bet.She kinda already did for an episode of Will & Grace:
Since they’ve clearly decided to stop trying to pick good shows, an I Love Lucy re-enactment in that series seems ever less likely.
Except the review didn’t mention her.
Debra Messing IS Debra Kerr in From Here to “From Here to Eternity,” to Eternity.
We just need Debra to play Lucille Ball in a fan film so that there will be a level of hell where that and the Nathan Fillion-Nathan Drake fan film and that offputting Robin Williams fan film play forever and ever and ever.
Nah. Debra Messing looks nothing like Deborah Kerr.
Why do I feel like this would have gotten a ‘B’ or better if the director hadn’t been named “Aaron Sorkin”?
It’s possible, maybe even probable. Aaron Sorkin’s style is often less grating when you don’t know it’s him going into the film. When I do know it’s Sorkin ahead of time, I feel like I start counting the tropes that I might not have otherwise noticed.
love everyone in the comments using data to explain that sorkin doesn’t suck. ‘actually if you look at these statistics ‘the trial of the chicago 7 was considered good’…well, i chose to watch the movie and it wasn’t!
Thank you!!!! Adam Sandler movies make a lot of money too. Doesn’t mean they’re good either!
Well, “The Trial of the Chicago 7″ did not have the Wins Above Replacement we’d expect from a Sorkinn film, but its BABIP and OPS+ were both Hall of Fame worthy.
I think the point the person who posted that was trying to make was that Sorkin isn’t necessarily out of favor with the critics right now, and therefore this negative review isn’t because the media is currently out to get him. For what little it’s worth, I thought Trial of the Chicago 7 was pretty good. Not amazing, but fairly solid.
Were partially melted wax figures from Madame Tussaud’s Las Vegas unavailable?
I think Kidman’s an amazing actress but from the sound of it she wasn’t right for the role (looks/impersonation aside). But it’s also tough thinking about some of the actresses who demonstrate the Lucille Ball comic energy (say, an Emma Stone or Anna Faris) who would also be able to do the Sorkin genius talk thing. The only one I can think of is Rose Byrne. But that also makes me think that Sorkin probably just wasn’t the right writer/director for the material. So perhaps just an unfortunate project for all involved.
Sorkin relies on too many tropes to get through a script. He’s too self-conscious and annoying to write well. If he weren’t a white guy, he’d be waiting tables in Hollywood, waiting for his big break.
Emma Stone would have been fantastic for the part, though currently a bit younger than Lucy was when I LOVE LUCY debuted. Maybe it’s something she’ll be able to revisit at a later point in her career.
Yeah I think she’d be a great Lucy, but I don’t know if she would’ve been a great Sorkin Lucy.
I don’t remember Lucille Ball as asian.
Underrated comment.
suffused with the frustrations Ball feels as she’s told, essentially, that she’s not enough of a looker to make it in the movies.I can’t speak for the television executives of that period, but I saw Ball in an early role (playing the secretary of a private detective) and she was smoking. When she wanted to be hot, she could most definitely be hot.
I think my favorite Lucy-related movie I’ve seen is the PBS-broadcast documentary “Finding Lucy.” It was made in 2000, when many of her contemporaries were still alive. It glosses over some things, and it at times feels a bit pat, but it’s heartfelt, genuine, and even if it doesn’t leer into her and Desi’s marriage difficulties, it also doesn’t try to sugarcoat the narrative of her live. You can find it on YouTube, I think.Oh and while you’re on YT, check out interviews done by the Archive of American Television, with her daughter Lucie Arnaz. What a pistol. She had her own showbiz career although mostly stuck to theater. She’s like, the kind of woman you wanna sit down in a coffee shop for an hour to hear her tell stories about what she experienced. She pulls no punches. Here she is talking about “I Love Lucy”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIxJnSvFfY4
TCM’s The Plot Thickens podcast is also doing a multi-part biography of Lucille Ball right now. As far as these types of podcasts go (point-by-point biographies), I think it’s quite fantastic. It certainly has me firing up the new episodes as soon as they come out.
https://theplotthickens.tcm.com/
Thanks so much for recommending the PBS doc “Finding Lucy.” I’m enjoying this show more than I have anything else in I don’t know how long. Also, my mother adored Lucille Ball so the memories are welcome.
The ending is my favorite part, as heartbreaking as it is.
I’m disappointed to hear this. A lot of the pieces had me worried, but I think there are some genuinely interesting stories to be told about Lucille Ball that haven’t really been delved into fully.The 1990’s made for TV movie with Francis Fisher and Maurice Bernard was a decent enough version of their relationship, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a good version of her behind the scenes, beyond just being Lucy and Desi’s wife.
I have a lot of weariness about watching Kidman attempt another accent…i find her so bad at those that I don’t know why she keeps being cast in roles requiring them. Just her two most recent shows were so distracting to me because of this. In “The Undoing”, where she played the New Yorker daughter of Donald Sutherland, and had an accent that for the life of me I coudn’t place, and then the disastrous “Russian” accent she attempted in “Nine Perfect Strangers”, which came and went, each time sounding more absurd…
She’s like Jeff Bridges that way. Talking in low, growly vocal fry is his thing the way weird accents are Kidman’s thing.
I’m sure Aaron Sorkin could have made a better movie if he could remember his West Wing script that was filmed nearly word for word.
He does tend to repeat himself.
“…and suffused with the frustrations Ball feels as she’s told, essentially, that she’s not enough of a looker to make it in the movies.”I am pretty sure that never happened.
I’ve seen pictures of her when she was young. I’m quite confident such an exchange never happened either.
Maybe some of those characters from the Twilight Zone episode with reversed beauty standards stumbled into her reality.
Or how in Bad Moms, Mila Kunis was supposed to be frumpy. Yeah she was so hideous. Sure.
I don’t know if such a moment happened but I’ve been listening to the third season of The Plot Thickens which is focusing on Lucy. In it they share that Lucy definitely did not consider herself to be a great beauty, even after having done a stint as a model. This fascinates me as I certainly think she was a beautiful woman but once you have a perception of yourself stuck in your head, no matter who put it there, it’s hard to get past it I suppose.
Just because we find her gorgeous doesn’t mean it’s not true. I can absolutely see Hollywood execs saying this to her as a way to “keep her in line”.
Sure, but in her early days she was cast for her looks. I can much more believe she was told she was over the hill for the movie industry.
And none of it would have been possible without Cliff Gardner!
I have the same question about this that I’ve had for a while: does it have a scene of them doing part of the show and actually pulling it off? I’m sure Sorkin thinks that’s beside the point, he doesn’t understand that being funny is kind of important to comedy. Most of the people he writes are just him.
Oh lord, Sorkin uses that “one egg is un oeuf” joke, doesn’t he?
Having watched Dance, Girl, Dance on TCM the other day, I have to say the people who told Lucy she wasn’t enough of a looker to make it in the movies were idiots.
What is the point of this movie? Is there any reason this could be better than an actual documentary for anyone who cares or absolutely nothing for the vast numbers of people who don’t?This strikes me as a waste of time, talent, and money.
What’s the point of any movie?
Doesn’t “I Love Lucy” constantly contain scenes that insult the audience’s intelligence??
I’ve never understood the reverence so many people have for that show. I understand that it was groundbreaking, and there’s no doubt they were both extremely talented people, but I Love Lucy always struck me as misogynistic garbage aimed at the lowest common denominator.
Is that how it struck you, person from the dawn of television?Get over yourself and get some context. FFS.
I already said that I know it was groundbreaking, but not everything ages well. I wasn’t around for the dawn of television, but I’m still allowed to have opinions on things from that time period. I wasn’t around for the dawn of film either, but I’d say that Birth of a Nation, though incredibly important to the history of the art form, and obviously a product of a singular talent, hasn’t aged well. Am I allowed to have that opinion?
Sure! But maybe don’t call it garbage? Or make assumptions about the relative intelligence of the audience? (“lowest common denominator”) Especially that last one, because in context of the time, EVERYONE would have been your “lowest common denominator”. An awful lot of people watched that show. Even intellectuals! GASP!(Objectively, yes, it trafficks in sexist tropes. So does just about everything from that era, so slapping that criticism on I Love Lucy seems weirdly petty.)
“Garbage” was a poorly chosen word. But I still think that, no matter how popular it was, it didn’t age especially well, and I personally never really understood why it’s so beloved. People can certainly disagree with me, but it’s a show that simply never resonated with me, and for that reason I find it difficult to overlook its flaws.
Excellent review.
All this talk about Kidman’s casting but I can’t see Bardem as Arnaz for a second. Too rugged, too strong, too muted in all the roles I’ve ever seen him in. I’m really curious as to how this performance lands.
That a guy who loves the history of TV so much didn’t make this 100% about Lucy literally creating the multi-cam studio sitcom is crazy to me. That and Desilu’s hand in Star Trek are two of my favorite things to teach in TV classes.
suffused with the frustrations Ball feels as she’s told, essentially,
that she’s not enough of a looker to make it in the movies.
Gene Kelly, Red Skelton, Cole Porter and Roy del Ruth respond with this….
“He and Kidman give the movie an extra (and sometimes frankly strange) bit of pizzazz, and Sorkin seems to sense it, recognizing that the stars imperfectly but eye-catchingly impersonating other stars shine are big for his lofty yet closed universe.”Jesus, that’s a clunky sentence!
“Sorkin’s greatest boondoggle” was carrying a crackpipe through an airport metal detector as a 40 year old man.
Ah, but there is a difference between a boondoggle and a fuckup, isn’t there?
Tom Davenport of the Burbank Airport Police said Sorkin was arrested on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance and booked at Burbank City Jail. He was released about three hours later on $10,000 bail.
$10K bail? Not $100K? No erroneous charge of ‘intent to distribute’? No label of drug kingpin? No 10-15 year sentence? He gets treated like a human being and avoids jail and gets rehab? Why wasn’t he left in the cell to die of an overdose? What’s the world coming to?
You’d think a hotshot writer guy would have a nice custom-blown glass dick
You talk about a writer with tons of talent that leaves all other writers in the dust, it’s Sorkin. But even I’m baffled that this aspect of Ball’s life got the movie treatment.
Aaron Sorkin is one of those guys who will always be on my radar, but geez if he hasn’t been insufferable since The Social Network (last thing I saw of his that I -kinda- liked). I was one of the ten people that actually watched Sports Night during its’ initial run, and I loved The West Wing up until the final two seasons. I gave The Newsroom a try, but that premiere episode just shot itself in the foot right from the opening. Oddly, I’m gonna watch this, simply in honor of my grandmother (RIP) who absolutely loved Lucy and I spent many afternoons as a pre-teen watching her show in re-runs with her. (Side note: Javier Bardem looks like a wax sculpture in that photo header.)
But does Lucille Ball ever get sick at sea? That’s the burning question.
J.K. Simmons as Fred Mertz deserves some kind of award..
The weirdest thing in this movie is Desi Arnaz claiming that the communists took his family’s land, imprisoned his father, drove his family out of the country… in a movie set in 1952, 7 years before the Cuban Revolution.
Arnaz’s family was fleeing the 1933 Sergeants’ Revolt, not communists.
I loved it. Thought I would be watching it side eyed while scrolling the net but I was riveted. The acting was so good and concentrating the story into that one week was a good strategy. What we always forget about Lucille Ball is that she was not a funny woman. She was a comedic actress. And what we never fully appreciate about Desi is that he was extremely witty and a genius who all but invented TV as we know it. I think this show conveyed that to some degree.
I’d like to see the follow up show here. Dramatizing the week in which they perform for the last time together in 1960 on the show and are no longer speaking to each other and at the last straw.
Just saw this. I thought it was a pretty damn good movie, especially for what I paid for it (someone else’s Prime). Nicole played Lucy quite well, the offscreen voice was near perfect (IMO), Javier played Desi almost as well (just couldn’t lower his voice enough), and JK Simmons hit William Frawley perfectly, though it wasn’t as much a stretch. I had not read much about Lucy’s HUAC issues, but I’ll probably do so now, since Sorkin likes to stretch things.
Saw it over the weekend expecting I would eye roll through it and left both thoroughly entertained and utterly impressed with Nicole Kidman’s performance. Bardem was clearly miscast and its strange because he still gives an amazing performance so I wonder if an actor has to both do a great performance and a convincing imitation in these things or is the acting enough. For me I just know what Desi Arnaz both looked and sounded like so Bardem took me out of it when they were on stage performing the show. Less so in other scenesAnyway, I missed the memo that we aren’t supposed to like Sorkin anymore.