| Amazon Studios | Release Date: December 10, 2021 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
26
Mixed:
19
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews
Dec 14, 2021
Given 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.
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Dec 7, 2021
No 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.
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Dec 7, 2021
The 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.
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Dec 7, 2021
I’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.
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Dec 9, 2021
It 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.
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Dec 7, 2021
Being the Ricardos is a fascinating look at a time in American life when a number of facades were beginning to crumble. The film examines several of those issues, including racism and cultural bias, sexuality, beauty and the role of women in society. It does all of those things while telling a truly engaging story.
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RogerEbert.comDec 10, 2021
It 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.
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Dec 9, 2021
Sometimes, miscasting can be very interesting, in the hands of an actor who knows what she’s doing — and Kidman is definitely that. Here, she creates a nuanced and believable version of Ball (and of “Lucy,” the character Ball played on her sitcom “I Love Lucy,” though we don’t see much of her), meticulously introducing us to a serious, thoughtful woman obsessed with the details of comedy, who understood what it meant to have power at a time when few women did.
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Dec 7, 2021
The bottom line on Being the Ricardos is that it’s irresistible. It’s an invitation to go behind the scenes of the “I Love Lucy” show and to see what Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were really like. It’s also an invitation to travel back to the 1950s, with writer-director Aaron Sorkin as your guide.
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Dec 7, 2021
Dec 14, 2021
As with his Trial of the Chicago 7 film, Sorkin seems to view history as the fodder for working with A-list stars and scoring ideological zingers. Mission accomplished, we guess. At a certain point, however, you really wish the film would stop ‘splaining its creator’s viewpoints and start actually being about its subjects.
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Dec 7, 2021Screen RantDec 7, 2021
It’s unfortunate that Being the Ricardos never becomes as interesting as the people it’s centered on. The film offers enough interpersonal drama to keep audiences watching and intrigued, but while Sorkin’s script moves steadily towards the ending, the story wanes and never builds enough momentum to truly impress.
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IndieWireDec 7, 2021
While the filmmaker’s affection for full circle moments can be charming, within the context of “Being the Ricardos,” it all feels like a cheat. The film might not opt to get as obvious as Lucy muttering to herself, “Yes, I do love Lucy!,” but it gets damn well close, and that’s sillier than anything Ball ever dreamed up.
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Dec 7, 2021
It’s just one symptom of the disease afflicting Being the Ricardos, which tries too hard to pack too much in, and ends up incapable of saying much at all as a result, which is baffling, because it’s such a talky movie. There’s a great film to be made about these two iconic television talents and their respective egos. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s own ego casts too large a shadow here for us to be able to see it.
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Dec 21, 2021
Sorkin has said that he’s not a particular fan of I Love Lucy’s brand of slapstick and Being the Ricardos goes out of its snooty way to avoid anything as vulgar as Lucille Ball’s comedy, save for a very brief glimpse of the famous grape-stomping scene. The film’s obsession with process means we’re never getting to drink the wine.
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Dec 7, 2021
A film about so many different things that it ends up about none of them, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos is visually inert, and features an emotionally stifled performance from Nicole Kidman as the lively Lucille Ball. Javier Bardem brings energy to Desi Arnaz, but it isn’t enough to pick the disjointed pieces up off the floor.
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Dec 9, 2021
There’s a good movie baked into Being the Ricardos’ 131 minutes. It’s about 90 minutes long, maybe a little less. The remaining 41 minutes comprise an Aaron Sorkin movie, and like too much cream in a beautifully fried donut, they weigh down the total package with needless fat: Talking heads, flashbacks and archival footage.
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Dec 7, 2021
Imagine a 10-episode podcast about the making of a single episode of the 1950s marital sitcom “I Love Lucy” — a podcast dense with behind-the-scenes details about the show’s real-life husband-and-wife stars, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who played wildly caricatured versions of themselves on the hit show for six seasons. Imagine a trove of inside-baseball trivia about the early days of television, as well as details about the stars’ real lives, including Ball’s 1952 pregnancy, which Arnaz — a TV pioneer who popularized the three-camera setup — wanted to weave into the show’s plot. Then imagine dumping all that material, like a box full of marbles, into a two-hour movie.
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SlashfilmDec 7, 2021
The Film StageDec 7, 2021
Dec 7, 2021
A Wikipedia entry fed into what can only be called The Sorkinator, but missing the wit module, Being the Ricardos is cultural-television-marital history flattened into a babbling stream of airless, horribly shot scenes that never come close to the glorious timing of a single comic exchange on “I Love Lucy.”
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