A screener DVD of Being the Ricardos showed up in my mailbox yesterday and I watched it last night. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Some folks seem irate that Aaron Sorkin "fictionalized" Lucy, Desi, Bill Frawley, Vivian Vance, several writers and others, putting words they never said — and probably feelings they never had — into their mouths. Whether that should be done at all is a long argument that involves lots of examples.
The thought did occur to me though that Sorkin did nothing to the folks depicted in this movie that wasn't done to the lawmen and gangsters depicted for four seasons of the Untouchables TV series…executive produced by Desi Arnaz. The offspring of Mr. and Mrs. Arnaz have not only endorsed this new movie but served as its Executive Producers. So if they're not upset it was made, I'm not going to be upset it was made.
And yes, history had been revised and compressed and altered a lot. Every movie that depicts real events does this. My problem with Stan & Ollie, you may recall, was not so much that they tampered but that they created fake conflicts. In real life, Laurel and Hardy did not have fights like they did in the film. In real life, Lucy and Desi did fight a lot and they eventually ended the marriage.
So that didn't bother me a lot. Overall, I'd say I was a little more bothered by the anachronisms and tiny errors…like saying they were "taping" I Love Lucy at a time when shows were filmed, not taped. Or producer Jess Oppenheimer describing himself as "the showrunner." That noun was used to describe Aaron Sorkin when he did The West Wing in 1997. It was never used in the TV business in in earlier decades. There were a number of these and they would have been so simple to catch and release.
No, I think the reason I didn't love the film was that it was 125 minutes of mostly unhappy people arguing with each other. There didn't seem to be much upside or joy to starring in the #1 TV show in the country. Sorkin crammed a lot of events that occurred over several weeks into one week. That might have been okay but it means he crammed all the related arguments and anger and this person trying to control that person into one week and for me, that was just a little too much unpleasantness.
There were moments I liked and some stellar performances. Acting Oscars here and there would not surprise me. But what I got out of this movie — and I'm not saying this is actually true — is that it was no fun working on I Love Lucy or Being [Around] the Ricardos.