Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2021)

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domino harvey
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#51 Post by domino harvey » Tue Oct 19, 2021 6:33 pm

Wow, they are really hiding Kidman in this trailer. She already doesn’t sound like her, not very optimistic about being able to see her for more than a nanosecond either

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#52 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 19, 2021 9:48 pm

Yeah it's strange, I expected her to come out at the very end, as recent trailers like to do in withholding and then giving the audience a snippet of the thespian transformation they've been waiting for, but nope. Suspicious.


pistolwink
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#54 Post by pistolwink » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:11 pm

Sorkin also says:
But as word got out that I was doing this, what I discovered is that there are people who are really passionate about I Love Lucy. For me, it’s nostalgic. I remember watching I Love Lucy reruns when I was home sick from school. It’s not a show that if we took a fresh look at today, we’d think was funny, I don’t think.
Whatta maroon.

beamish14
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#55 Post by beamish14 » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:30 pm

pistolwink wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:11 pm
Sorkin also says:
But as word got out that I was doing this, what I discovered is that there are people who are really passionate about I Love Lucy. For me, it’s nostalgic. I remember watching I Love Lucy reruns when I was home sick from school. It’s not a show that if we took a fresh look at today, we’d think was funny, I don’t think.
Whatta maroon.


I have a feeling this will be a campy disaster along the lines of Kidman's Princess Grace film.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#56 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:44 pm

I had pretty low expectations about this anyway. Even the stuff I initially liked by Sorkin comes off worse when I revisit them.

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senseabove
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#57 Post by senseabove » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:08 pm

Sorkin's asinine comment actually made me pull out the I Love Lucy S1 set when I was knocked out with a cold last week just to remind myself that, yeah, it's still funny, if almost single-handedly thanks to Lucille Ball. Do 70-year-old cultural references not have the same gas they did then? Of course. Are some of the premises cringy? You bet. But it's amazing to me that someone can watch the show and not see, at the worst, a diamond in the rough: that Ball was a supremely talented physical comedian, deserving of mention in the same breath as Buster Keaton.

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domino harvey
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#58 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:56 pm

He’s not wrong that many older sitcoms, even “classics,” have aged poorly as viewers gradually leave behind traditional three camera, live audience situational comedy series and the true relics of the period seem even staler. But I’m not sure that really describes this series, and you’d think the guy writing and directing a Lucille Ball biopic would want to be a fan, right? At the very least, the continued popularity of physical comedy as a popular medium refutes the claim— Ball brings something Donna Reed didn’t

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aox
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#59 Post by aox » Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:25 pm

This is well made, and the performances are at best competent, but it is incredibly bland and sterile. I never once felt that established conflict of the film (Lucy being a communist) and certainly never felt the stakes. On top of that, the structure of the film is awkward. As usual with recent biopics, it's a great move for Sorkin to focus on one specific week of their lives/production of the show, but he still clumsily shoehorns in this cumbrous origin story about how Lucy and Desi met and the creation of the show. It's entertaining and perhaps worth watching, but there isn't much here.

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swo17
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#60 Post by swo17 » Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:57 pm

Mildly curious how this compares to something like The Eyes of Tammy Faye. That film's not without its problems, but Chastain totally loses herself in the role, D'Onofrio is a fun chameleon to watch, and I was never not going to see it with Michael Showalter directing. Not sure there's any of the same draw here

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knives
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#61 Post by knives » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:07 pm

Now I want to make this a double feature maybe on Friday. Damn your good ideas Swo.

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Kracker
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#62 Post by Kracker » Wed Dec 22, 2021 8:17 pm

swo17 wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:57 pm
Mildly curious how this compares to something like The Eyes of Tammy Faye. That film's not without its problems, but Chastain totally loses herself in the role, D'Onofrio is a fun chameleon to watch, and I was never not going to see it with Michael Showalter directing. Not sure there's any of the same draw here
This doesnt really compare to Tammy Faye. Tammy Faye leaves out a whole bunch of story and mainly consists of Chastain and Garfield reacting the Bakkers' cringefests while the big draw is seeing Farwell, Robertson, Swaggart, and Bakker all at the same table like some kind of evangelical legion of doom. Ricardos has a much better script condensing story and events, and i got a lot more out of it

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knives
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#63 Post by knives » Sun Dec 26, 2021 3:11 pm

After being left utterly depressed, in a good way, by Tammy Faye, this was an excellent pick me up. I get that this isn’t going to be for everyone. Kidman gives a pretty bad performance, but otherwise everything worked for me. I especially loved that Sorkin doesn’t treat these incidents like the end of the world which honestly helps create humor from how seriously Kidman takes it. JK Simmons, in a great performance, seems the voice of the film just asking people to chill out and have fun. It’s a nice alternative approach to Chicago 7 which understand he need to be serious. This understands the need to have a mental health check.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#64 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 26, 2021 3:29 pm

Agreed in most respects, except I thought Kidman was the best part, and was particularly grateful that her perf was significantly more toned-down than expected, resigning imitations of Bacall’s on-screen persona to a minimum. Consequently, she’s able to breathe her own interpretation of the character in the role behind the scenes, demonstrating both a Sorkin-branded acidic wit that elevates her opportunities for agency beyond typified female power of the era, and empathizes with the restrictions still present from systems.

If nothing else, the film is further proof that Sorkin’s talents at locating and capitalizing on a way to have his cake and eat it too extend beyond the page and into the conductor’s chair: concocting fantastical pleasantries of artificial catharsis for the audience while honoring serious subject matters that might be specifically-marked in macro issues on the surface but have investable roots in relatable human moral and emotional challenges. He’s also refined his ability to pull this off with a light touch- and that ethereal quality is a refreshing pivot from his last film by forfeiting the urges of immediacy from that second objective in favor of the first’s digestive merits. I don’t want to say Sorkin has exactly gotten more ‘humble’ but.. I guess the shift in priorities does indicate that for me- at least comparatively.
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Sun Dec 26, 2021 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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knives
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2022)

#65 Post by knives » Sun Dec 26, 2021 3:48 pm

I do agree that, for everyone not only Kidman, I appreciate that they were playing out the characters and not imitating the people.

As for Sorkin humility, I did think that had he used this approach on his SNL show it would have been better received.

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Matt
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Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2021)

#66 Post by Matt » Tue Dec 28, 2021 1:19 am

This was better than I expected, but I expected a disaster. Javier Bardem is not particularly believable as Desi Arnaz or Ricky Ricardo, but he is credible as a powerful producer, charismatic performer, and consummate manipulator. I think if all the performers and creators had agreed to make the same movie Bardem was making, it would have been superb.

Kidman is intermittently uncanny as Lucy Ricardo. She got the voice, the expressions, the mannerisms, the timing down like 99%. It’s a great technical performance and physical impersonation. As Lucille Ball, though, I just don’t know. Kidman is just unable to disappear into the role in the “real-life” scenes, and part of that is because Lucille Ball is probably an unplayable role (in a serious picture), part of that is the makeup (which is simultaneously too much and not enough), and part of that is Sorkin’s conception of Ball as a tough-as-nails girlboss who always has a zippy comeback to the dumb questions posed by the uniformly idiotic suits she’s cursed with having to answer to. (There’s a boardroom scene where you’re almost expecting her to spit out Mommie Dearest’s “Don’t fuck with me, fellas” line.) I don’t think any actress alive could have given a BETTER performance than Kidman as the role is written.

There is also just far too much reliance on scenes about writing, about workshopping gags and jokes, about who is “allowed” to make creative decisions, and whatever the issue is, Lucy is always right. You can practically hear Sorkin snort “That’ll tell the bastards!” after tapping out a particularly pointed line in one of the many writers room or rehearsal scenes.

I think one thing the film gets right here is that Hollywood just didn’t know what to do with her, and LB herself thought she was Ann Sothern, Imogene Coca, and Rita Hayworth rolled into one. And maybe that was the problem and the key to her appeal, she just didn’t fit into the limited roles Hollywood could offer women and thus needed to create a role for herself. But it’s a problem in this film, too, and it doesn’t feel like it has an answer to the question, “Who was Lucille Ball when she wasn’t in front of an audience?”

If there is any miscasting here, I think it’s Sorkin and the showbiz biopic template. I just can’t buy the speeches and the non-stop diamond-cut snappy patter and the swelling music and the widescreen framing. This needed a director who is interested in seeing actors as human beings (in the sense of both the characters portrayed and the actors portraying them). It needed a looser framing (at least make the TV stuff look like TV), less polish overall, a more human heartbeat. It needed a format that more explicitly acknowledges that Kidman and Bardem, et al, are playing characters (and certainly NOT some kind of weird mock-documentary framing device from the point of view of the show’s writers). It might have been a good stage play.

I would like to have seen what someone like Mike Nichols, James L. Brooks, or Arnaud Desplechin (at their best, of course) could have done with this, or maybe Marielle Heller.

I hope there’s a sequel in 5-10 years focusing on a week on “The Lucy Show” with Dan Fogler as Gale Gordon/Mr. Mooney.

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin, 2021)

#67 Post by Walter Kurtz » Tue Dec 28, 2021 4:21 am

I would have liked to seen Being the Kramdens with Edward Norton playing Ed Norton. I think Edward Norton would make a GREAT Ed Norton.

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