Being the Ricardos

Loving her was always part of the deal. In the early 1950s, every Monday evening across America, millions of Americans turned the dials of their big black-and-white Admirals, General Electrics and Westinghouses to CBS for “I Love Lucy.” 

It may have been the greatest title ever written. For anything.

To love Lucy wasn't to know her, necessarily – but writer/director Aaron Sorkin's new drama “Being the Ricardos” is here to fill the gap. Somewhat at least. Powered by a(nother) triumphant performance by Nicole Kidman, not so much portraying comedy legend Lucille Ball as channeling her, it joins the long list of based-on-a-real-icon stories pacing this year's Academy Award field.

The “I” of the title was, of course, Ball's husband onscreen and off, conga-playing Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. Just as the real Desi was the catalyst that sparked Lucy's greatness, Javier Bardem's terrific performance is a similarly potent secret ingredient, generating great chemistry with Kidman for her notable feat of morphing.

They couldn't have called the show “Aye Aye Aye Love Lucy,” but Desi's signature “'Splain it to me, Lucy” had the same effect. His apparent willingness to regularly play bewildered straight man for her inspired zaniness belied the fact that he had been the star – the suave Latin musical heartthrob – and she the chorus girl when they first met. And while she was a brilliant force of nature, he had a huge role – artistically, technically and making the business decisions – that created the phenomenon she became.

Since it's written by Aaron Sorkin, you know the script is going to aim higher than stomping wine grapes, no matter how hilarious the gag was at the time … and still is. Instead “Being the Ricardos” focuses on the creation of a single episode of the show during a week from hell.

Most of us are too young to remember (gosh, it feels good to finally be able to say that) that in the years following World War II, demagogue Joe McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities was persecuting law-abiding Americans with charges they were communists.  Under the guise of rooting out the “Red Menace,” it was a campaign of fear mongering and intimidation and it paralyzed the country.

In TV's infancy, decades before the 24-hour news cycle, newspapers delivered the news of the day. Two headlines begin the movie – one about Desi's infidelities; but even more troubling, columnist Walter Winchell's scoop that Lucile Ball was one of them Reds.

The charge had the potential of making the episode they were working on the last for “I Love Lucy.” Meetings with big wigs from CBS, Westinghouse and sponsor Philip Morris happened through the week in the executive offices upstairs while the show itself took form in the studio and writing room below.

Always great (at least when he's not doing insurance commercials) J.K. Simmons plays William Frawley, and Tony-winner Nina Arianda is Vivian Vance, the bane of their May-December pairing. While Lucy and Ricky's comic misunderstandings were for show in front of the cameras, Fred and Ethel's were apparently just the tip of the actual iceberg, and many of Simmons' best barbs are delivered after the director yells, “Cut.”

Alia Shawkat is a scene stealer as Madelyn Pugh, the lone woman in the writers' room, continually besting Bob Carroll (played by Jake Lacy, a lot more appealing than he was in “The White Lotus.”)

The plot is divided into days of the week according to the production schedule, from the table read on Monday to shooting the show on Friday in front of a live audience with the three-camera format Desi had designed. Not only does this provide a fascinating glimpse “behind the scenes,” but an introductory course in the nuts and bolts of sitcom production in TV's soon-to-be golden age. It also makes room for flashbacks following Ball's career, and the fortuitous accidents that led her from being a studio extra to the greatest star in the new medium of television.

For Sorkin, like Lucille Ball herself, the TV studio may be a more nurturing home than the place they return to at the end of the day. Sorkin's trademark dialogue is snappier than anything the show-within-the-show's writers are coming up with, and his movie offers plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in place of easy TV gags and shtick.

But by the same token, the writing at times becomes too clever, trying to force Lucy and Desi's personal complexities, exponentially compounded by their relationship, into a convenient three-act structure. Like Sorkin's “Trial of the Chicago 7” last year, his hip revisionism is happy to bend truth into something more theatrical. Ironically, in “Being the Ricardos,” the actual historical figure who saves the day isn't a guy Aaron Sorkin would call a “hero” under any other circumstances.

Nonetheless, the acting alone makes the movie entertaining and well worth seeing. Bardem learned to play the congas among the other fine points of mastering his role, but it's Kidman who dazzles every time she's on screen. Lucy's a perfectionist, a serious student of her art, always examining and refining the process.

“I'll be funny by Friday,” she quips at some point in the rehearsal.

Her creation is the product of a brilliant mind as much as her physical gifts. Like the Beatles in Peter Jackson's new documentary “Get Back,” Lucille Ball created a version of herself that came to take on a life of its own.

Nicole Kidman captures all this, and more. Her Lucy is a unique work of art … and very possibly more appealing than the template it's built on.