The Pitch: A few weeks prior to the release of Being the Ricardos, writer and director Aaron Sorkin gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter that caused a bit of a stir — specifically the part where he said, “I remember watching I Love Lucy reruns when I was home sick from school. It’s not a show that if we took a fresh look at today, we’d think was funny.”
Sorkin’s one of the 21st century’s greatest wits, but as Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip survivors will tell you, his grasp on the nature of actual comedy is lacking. And what’s actually amusing about that quote above is how utterly unnecessary it was for him to say it, as his new film about one of the greatest screen couples of all time reveals how fundamentally he fails to understand said couple — especially Lucy herself.
Show Week: The Amazon Studios film is structured around one week in the life of Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnez (Javier Bardem), during which they’re juggling the shooting of a new episode along with a number of huge behind-the-scenes issues, including Lucy’s rumored status as a member of the Communist party (not exactly a cool thing to be in the early 1950s), her looming pregnancy (a groundbreaking moment for American television), and Desi’s rumored infidelity.
