Being the Ricardos: Film Review

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, JK Simmons, Nina Arianda

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin's I Love Lucy film promised plenty of drama - and it wasn't just because of the furore directed at the casting of Nicole Kidman as America's sweetheart Lucille Ball.

But what it ends up doing is something more akin to presenting you with a range of themes and never quite diving deeply enough into any of them and making you care.

In 1952, Hollywood power couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz face personal and professional obstacles that threaten their careers, their relationship, and their hit television show.

It may be one week in their lives, but Javier Bardem's Desi is pictured supposedly cheating on Lucille Ball, Ball's been labelled a communist at the end of a popular radio broadcast and matters are made even worse when a potential baby rears its head threatening America's newest popular sitcom's future.

Sorkin tries his usual approach of throwing many complex balls up in the air, but doesn't quite manage to juggle all of them with the aplomb needed to keep the script feeling fresh.

As previously mentioned, it doesn't help matters that none of the central themes feel massively developed or engaging enough to sustain a 2hr plus biopic, no matter how much star quality Kidman brings to proceedings.

Odd touches like starting the film with a series of talking head interviews and then abandoning that format for no bafflingly good reason sit aside moments of brilliance such as Kidman's Ball gazing off into the distance and visualising how her script issues could be solved.

That's perhaps the problem with Being the Ricardos - just how unbalanced the whole thing is, and how it bounces from one moment to the next, leaving ideas feeling unformed.

There are some great performances contained within though - from Shawkat's bristly screen writer to JK Simmons' bitter old hack with a heart, the ensemble players in Being the Ricardos keep the interest levels up when they feel like they should be flagging - largely due to their delivery of Sorkin's trademark deep-dive dialogue.

Being the Ricardos isn't quite the slam dunk the talent involved would have you hoping for - it's the kind of watch that keeps you aloof and at arm's length - in fact, without any prior knowledge, it may well be the audience comes away feeling anything but love for Lucille Ball.

Being the Ricardos is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video