“Being the Ricardos” Is Aaron Sorkin At His Worst

Hollywood’s leading revisionist mind lies about history yet again for the sake of a terrible movie

WARNING: This review contains minor spoilers.

Hollywood can’t seem to stop saying “yes” to movies about the magic of filmmaking. Sometimes, this leads to a critically acclaimed box office hit, like La La Land, Hugo, or The Artist. But more frequently, this phenomenon produces half-baked, formulaic movies that might drum up an Oscar nomination (or ten), but are forgotten within the next few months (think Mank or Hail, Caesar!). Aaron Sorkin’s latest, Being the Ricardos, falls into the latter category.

Sorkin’s most notable flaw is that he is terrible at writing characters. He clearly excels most at snappy, pompous dialogue, meaning that creating well developed characters that resemble humans is not his strong suit. He seems to see characters as vessels to deliver this dialogue and doesn’t ever sacrifice his arrogant writing for the sake of creating meaningful scenes that flesh out his characters.

This effect was also present in Sorkin’s last film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, but to a lesser degree. That movie seemed to focus more on a series of events rather than a collection of characters. Don’t get me wrong, Chicago 7 is equally frustrating for a slew of other reasons; it’s unforgivably detrimental to history, imperialist, laughable, and reductive, but it’s also a well-structured and compelling narrative (and it’s quite a bit of fun to watch).

Aaron Sorkin’s political agenda makes itself known in Being the Ricardos, too: the movie literally concludes with an emotional standing ovation after Lucille Ball is revealed to be NOT a communist. In addition to the pontification, the screenplay is also surprisingly disrespectful to the source material. The movie should give room for nostalgia and extend admiration to I Love Lucy and its classic comedy, but it just doesn’t. Apparently, Sorkin doesn’t want his audience to revel in anyone’s writing but his own.

Lastly, below-par biopics are usually redeemed by solid leading performances but Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem prove disappointing as well. The characters are crude and one dimensional, and none of the actors seem to even attempt to impersonate the real life figures with the exception of J.K. Simmons.

In the end, after Lucy thankfully escapes from the grasp of communist accusations, the film concludes with a few sentences about the future of both characters. Except, the only information we get is that Lucy and Desi divorce following the final season of I Love Lucy. No recognition of Lucille Ball’s three subsequent hit solo sitcoms, or anything about her individual achievements. Despite how Aaron Sorkin tries to frame it, we only get to see our protagonist exist in relevance to her explicitly manipulative husband.

OVERALL SCORE: 2/10

Being the Ricardos was released on December 10, 2021 and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.