2021 Film Review Catch-up - Being the Recardos (15) - Prime Video

 I'm Lucille Ball. When I'm being funny, you'll know it.

Gist: It's a trying week in the lives of US TV legend Lucille Ball and her husband/comedy partner Desi Arnaz, aka Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. A media outlet is reporting rumours of Arnaz' infidelity, something he vehemently denies, while the House Un-American Activities Committee is making an accusation yet more damaging - that Ball has a communist past. Meanwhile on the set of the couple's beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, there are creative and personal tensions among cast and crew, including the broaching of an incendiary idea, one set to break a major television taboo of the era. (It's the unpalatable fact that women get pregnant in order to have babies.) Basically, this is a busy five days on set.

Juice: These events, while all based in reality, occurred independent of each other over several years. Screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin conflates it all into one working week, however, to create a jumping off point for this portrait of arguably the most influential couple in US entertainment history. Flashing back, it takes us to the fateful first meeting of Lucille and Desi and provides insight into how their on-screen pairing (the first inter-racial couple to grace American TV screens) came about. It's biopic done right, the man who wrote The West Wing drawing out the complexities of the stars themselves, while lovingly recreating the look and dynamics of the early television era, all by drawing out the crises of a single week in time.

The core of the film's success is the chemistry between Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. She (with the screenplay's help) finds the steely intelligence and neurosis behind Ball's screwball comedy persona, while he is every inch the suave entertainer fans of the show would expect in Arnaz. Whether squabbling or flirting, they bring to life the visceral connection that turned I Love Lucy into such a global favourite. Add support from J. K. Simmons and Stan and Ollie's Nina Arianda as the couple's co-stars (Fred and Ethel in the show), and you've got the right stuff to bring Sorkin's witty and nuanced period drama to life. 

Judgement: 8/10. It's not as dynamic as say The West Wing, nor does it have the high stakes of Sorkin's recent The Trial of the Chicago 7. But Being the Ricardos is still an incisively written delight, digging as it does into the sexual and racial politics of America's burgeoning TV entertainment industry, while exploring the romance and the heartbreak behind a still-beloved pairing of comedy greats. And if you ever wondered how Lucy's iconic grape-trampling scene came about, just maybe it happened the way it's portrayed here.