Although Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem made heroic changes, the culprit of this confusion is Sorkin’s writing and guidance
With the first extraordinary sitcom "I Love Lucy", Lucille Bauer and Desi Arnaz invented what television can do-to combine comedy, plot broadcasting, live drama, film production and new media The best elements of immediacy are combined into an unmissable weekly date with a talented couple.
In addition to broadcasting, Aaron Sorkin has also worked in all these formats, but you will never know that he is proficient in any of them, from the dull, tense and awkward ode to the Ball-Arnaz partnership he wrote and directed, "Become Ricardo."
Wikipedia entry input can only be called the content of The Sorkinator, but lacks a witty module. "Being Ricardos" is a culture-TV-marriage history flattened into a series of airtight and terrible shooting scenes, never close to the brilliant timing A single comic exchange about "I Love Lucy". Whether Nicole Kidman and Javier Baden perform as well as Ball and Arnaz is almost irrelevant (they are, they are not), because in any case, Sorkin doesn’t treat them well as roles. Interested, more as the spokesperson and legacy of their background. ("I am the biggest asset in the CBS portfolio!" is a description of the living room game, not a dialogue that anyone should believe.)
It seems that there is confusion between making the movie and the storyline that should be a season. Sorkin took the timeline of the production week in the second season of the show, and began to cram expos and workplace conflicts in, as if he thought foie gras It's the result: flashbacks, flashbacks from simulated documentaries, quarrels, madness, singing, dancing, Bauer's controversial pregnancy and author control, Arnaz's infidelity and originality, she was almost blacklisted, his first Two banana hang-ups, their underrated business acumen, how comedy works, how TV works, how does product sponsorship work, how Vivienne Vance (Nina Arianda) hates playing Ethel Mertz and Appears sloppy, and her TV husband William Frawley (JK Simmons) is happily showing sloppy, why the show host Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale) feels threatened, why the writer Madeleine Pugh (Aaliyah Shaukat) thinks Lucy Ricardo has been babyized...all of this is covered up. No drama. cover.
Sorkin's need to become an encyclopedia playwright is lost. This is a cohesive and fascinating portrait that depicts the love between underrated talents that has evolved into a successful partnership—playing a happy marriage. That movie sounds great, and Sorkin understands the trajectory, but his compulsiveness tells you his intentions-like in a false "This is what happened" interview-instead of showing us compelling The dynamics of the scenes, or let them naturally appear in the narrative during the tempering.
He even designed a wonderful bittersweet metaphor in Ricardos' sound field "home" as the only place where Ball and Arnaz really met; at work, they knew how to protect each other. However, the moment to point out their strengths and weaknesses as a couple is almost always included by the screenwriter of the A student and the pedestrian director of Sorkin.
This is Sorkin’s third attempt to direct. After the perfect "Molly's Game" and the imperfect "Chicago 7 Trial", although he did not show talent for the job, this is his best so far. A bad prototype of a trip. Forced pacing; Sorkin has incredibly weakened his own precious words with obvious musical clues, intermittent editing, and dull obstruction of actors. Then there are the shadows of Jeff Cronenworth's desaturated images, nicotine-stained and interchangeable-the sound field looks like a nightclub looks like Ball-Arnaz's home .
The scenes are often backlit or backlit so that the characteristics of the actor, as well as any potential nuances in Jon Hertman's set or client Sarah Lyle's costume, disappear into the brown. People yearn for the flat lighting of multiple 35mm cameras. This was created by "Metropolis" cinematographer Carl Freund for "I Love Lucy". This is a show where people's faces can be seen.
Unfortunately, it is not a problem to ignore the dissimilarities between Kidman and Baden and the people they play, because they are good enough actors to know that imitation is not a performance. However, although Bardem maintains a universally consistent animation Desi Arnaz, Kidman does not approve that Kidman photographed her as a different Lucy based on the scene (serious, fragile, jealous, sexy, cunning), rather than a steel -Like/rubber-like beauty. Year and situation. Her voice wasn't always straight and it didn't help-the iconic cigarette file was there, and it was perfect in some scenes, but not in others.
The rest of the "Being the Ricardos" cast is doing what is needed, and Simmons may be the most relaxed and interesting person in this group-even if his Frawley is more like a sitcom than Fred Mertz- -And Madeleine Pugle of Shaukat missed the chance to become more, a biting joke. When she and Bauer fall into it because Pugh is worried that Lucy Ricardo is a step backwards for funny women, this is the kind of communication you think you want, except that it patronizes to explain comedy , It sounds unnatural, and it happened in a window that was blown open, so the actor's characteristics were erased. That is "Being Ricardo".
"Being the Ricardos" was shown in theaters in the United States on Friday and will be shown on Amazon Prime Video on December 21.
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