Writer/director Aaron Sorkin has made a career for himself with scripts that show fast-talking, quick-witted characters discussing important manners, often in a manner that suggests the characters themselves are well aware of the weight of their conversations. His last film was a dramatization of the trial of the Chicago 7 with a veritable all-star cast of actors playing the various participants in that particularly infamous court case. He’s written about fictional presidents and fictional news networks, all doing weighty and important things.
So, naturally, his latest is about one weekend or so’s production of an episode of I Love Lucy.
In a story told with a framing device of two writers and a producer discussing a hectic weekend involving the production of what was the most popular TV show on the air at the time, the movie is about a period when multiple crises hit Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and her husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) all at once. A gossip magazine has come out saying Desi is an unfaithful husband, another source says Lucy may be a communist in red-hating America, and the couple realize Lucy is pregnant while also starring in a show that produces new episodes for more than 30 weeks a year. The show itself has problems as Desi (the executive producer in all but title) butts heads with sponsors and network representatives while Lucy butts heads with writers, directors, and co-stars William Frawley (J.K. Simmons) and Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda). Some of these issues are given more screentime than others, and the narrative occasionally flashes back to show how Lucy and Desi met and eventually got their own TV show.
As far as the characters go, for the most part, the movie showcases Lucy and Desi as a married couple who cared about each other but did fight occasionally–a writer in the framing device said the two were either always fighting or ripping each other’s clothes off in the opening minutes of the movie only to show the Arnazes at home proceeding to do both–but the more standout character is probably Kidman’s Ball. Lucy is a perfectionist at her craft, requiring explanations for how jokes are supposed to work in-universe for her character. If an explanation is good, she’ll go for it. She also spends a lot of time figuring out how to make scenes work as she sees physical comedy as the thing she knows and understands better than, well, anyone. Desi, by contrast, is a bit more laid back in many instances, but he can show a bit of a temper, and while Lucy will confirm she once checked a box to identify as a member of the communist party 20 years earlier, Desi really doesn’t like communists for personal reasons of his own.
The portrait of Lucy was the more illuminating. While both Lucy and Desi want to put on a good show every episode, she clearly was more involved in the process than Desi was. But the movie does take time to give personality to other characters, like Alia Shawkat’s writer, out to make sure women didn’t look particularly foolish, or Arianda’s Vance who has her own issues with Ball where her efforts to self-improvement are undermined by a person she considers a friend. Simmons, meanwhile, is once again a sometimes loveable, sometimes infuriating old crank as his Frawley is some sort of functional alcoholic from the looks of things, a man who is frequently drunk but able to hide it while annoying many of his co-workers, particularly TV wife Vance, with his orneriness. It wouldn’t be a Sorkin movie without a great ensemble it would seem.
That said, the movie didn’t quite make it to great for me. Oh, it was good, but somehow, given all the weightiness of many of Sorkin’s past movies, it never quite seems to work as well as it could. This is about the production of a sitcom, and while the movie stops to more or less check off famous moments from Lucy and Desi’s lives, to say nothing of having Kidman and the others recreate some very memorable moments from the show, it is still about the production of a sitcom. Somehow, when the same creator has told stories about presidents and miscarriages of justice, it seems a little bit of a step down to cover a TV show, no matter how beloved. As a nice look into the lives of Lucy and Desi, this was a good movie, but it doesn’t quite hold up next to some of Sorkin’s other work.
Then again, the framing device had one of the older folks telling the story say that somehow this weekend was a risk to Lucy and Desi’s lives and not just their careers. That wasn’t entirely accurate by a long shot, so the hyperbole was a little unwelcome.
Grade: B
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