In 1939, Lucy Ball is contracted to RKO Pictures. She gets small parts in big studio productions, but featured mainly in low budget films. She meets one of the film's cast, the charismatic 22-year-old Cuban singer Desi Arnaz and the two fall for each other instantaneously. Months after filming, they marry and buy a home in Hollywood. Desi has a successful stint fronting the Desi Arnaz Orchestra that tours around the country, while Lucy continues her film career with little su... (Full plot summary below)
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In 1939, Lucy Ball is contracted to RKO Pictures. She gets small parts in big studio productions, but featured mainly in low budget films. She meets one of the film's cast, the charismatic 22-year-old Cuban singer Desi Arnaz and the two fall for each other instantaneously. Months after filming, they marry and buy a home in Hollywood. Desi has a successful stint fronting the Desi Arnaz Orchestra that tours around the country, while Lucy continues her film career with little success. In 1948, she is cast in the radio show "My Favorite Husband", which becomes a success. The show draws interest from CBS and Philip Morris, but Ball only agrees if Desi plays her on screen husband. By 1953, the show is renamed "I Love Lucy" and becomes a smash hit with nearly 60 million viewers each week. On the night of the live filming, a newspaper article deems Lucy a Communist. Lucy admits but Desi insists not to tell the truth. They are now facing a crisis that could end their careers and their marriage.
Leave your thoughts about Being the Ricardos.
| Original-CinKim HughesGiven the devotion Ball continues to inspire in fans, it was perhaps too great a challenge for anyone to live up to casting expectations. Still, Being the Ricardos hits all the right notes, making these larger-than-life people seem at once pointedly human and even more ground-breaking than ever. |
| Film ThreatAlan NgI should be complaining about how bloated Being The Ricardos is, but I can’t. There’s a lot going on, but I wouldn’t cut a single word or scene. Like Lucy herself, the film is funny, deadly serious, and heartwarming all in one package. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreHowever much you know about these people and this subject, Sorkin shines a light in dark or unjustly-ignored corners of their epic story. And he makes obvious the strain and burden of “Being the Ricardos” into a film that’s witty and bittersweet. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperThere’s life, there’s TV — and there are movies about TV, and though Being the Ricardos is a work of drama, it has the essence of truth. |
| New York PostJohnny OleksinskiI’ve always had my reservations about Sorkin as a director. His scripts tend to be better than his final products. Those druthers started to fade with the moving “Trial of the Chicago 7” and are now completely gone after “Being the Ricardos.” His vision of ‘50s TV production is spot-on — nostalgic, quick, boozy, but without the glamor of Hollywood movie-making. |
| VarietyOwen GleibermanThe dialogue in Being the Ricardos has the blunt directness, dagger wit, and perfectly cut corners of Sorkinese — a sound that might be described as hardass Talmudic screwball. Beyond that, though, the entire movie is a piece of thrillingly stylized compression. It gets a real head of steam going, a hurtling energy and anxiety that rides on everything Lucy is feeling. |
| CNNBrian LowryNo matter how many times you've watched those classic "I Love Lucy" episodes (or not at all), it's likely you'll come away from Being the Ricardos with a greater appreciation for the central couple's talents as well as their personal failings and foibles. In that, Sorkin has delivered a colorful portrait that goes beyond the nostalgia-tinted hues of black and white. |
| SlateDana StevensIt is filmed, perhaps fittingly for the subject matter, like a TV show. But on the heels of a Sorkin movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7, whose women were essentially hippie-styled set dressing, it’s a pleasure to see him putting some of his signature quips in the mouths of female characters, especially one as spiky, complicated, and powerful as Lucille Ball. |
| RogerEbert.comTomris LafflyIt is with a zippy touch and a number of questionable directorial choices—Sorkin is still a much better writer than director—as well as an immersive, pressure-cooker structure that is never less than enthralling, that Sorkin implants his aforesaid signature style into Being the Ricardos. |
| The Associated PressLindsey BahrSorkin bites off a lot here — he wants this film to be about everything. And the dialogue is so typically snappy that he basically gets away with it. |
