Tag: The West Wing

Saga of Lucy and Desi is a Baba-loser

Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball (Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman) in a rare happy moment from Being the Ricardos (Amazon Studios photo)

By Richard Ades

Being the Ricardos, Aaron Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes look at the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy, provides the answers to several burning questions.

Question No. 1: Can Aaron Sorkin do comedy? Answer: No. Sorkin has excelled at high-minded dramas such as 2020’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 and TV’s The West Wing. But as the writer and director of this film about a comedy classic, he takes a relentlessly dour approach that leaves room for only a handful of chuckles. Fans of I Love Lucy will be disappointed.

Question No. 2: Can Nicole Kidman do comedy? Answer: Yes—but she gets little opportunity here. As I Love Lucy star Lucille Ball, Kidman is both unconvincing and, worst of all, unfunny except during the brief moments when she’s allowed to act out iconic scenes from the sitcom.

Question No. 3: Did they have electric lighting in the 1950s? Answer: Yes, though you’d never know it from Being the Ricardos. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth lights nearly every scene so dimly that you’d think it was illuminated by oil lamps and took place during a total eclipse.

For the one or two people who aren’t familiar with the iconic sitcom, I Love Lucy was about a redheaded screwball named Lucy Ricardo and her bandleader husband, Ricky, who were played by Lucille Ball and her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz. The Ricardos lived in a New York apartment building run by their friends Fred and Ethel Mertz, played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance. Premiering in 1951, the comedy quickly became a smash hit and ran for six seasons.

Set during a single week of the show’s second season, Sorkin’s movie deals with the unexpected and potentially career-ending rumor that Ball once belonged to the Communist Party. Also during the week, Ball struggles with her suspicions that husband Arnaz (Javier Bardem) is being unfaithful. In addition, she and Arnaz must inform their sponsors that she’s pregnant, after which they hope to convince them to allow her TV character to also be pregnant despite fears that viewers will be shocked and repulsed.

There also are a few side issues that come up: Co-star Vance (Nina Arianda) chafes over the unglamorous image she’s forced to maintain as frumpy neighbor Ethel Mertz; fellow co-star Frawley (J.K. Simmons) tells Ball she’s not giving Arnaz enough on-set respect; comedy writer Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) complains about jokes that “infantilize” Lucy rather than treating her as a mature woman; and Ball engages in seemingly endless skirmishes with her director and writers over what’s funny and what’s not.

Also, in a flashback to the series’ creation, Ball fights with network bigwigs over her determination to cast her Cuban-born husband as her TV spouse despite their fears that viewers aren’t ready to accept an ethnically mixed marriage.

Whew! That’s a lot of issues. But the real problem is that Sorkin treats them all so seriously, emphasizing each melodramatic moment with overwrought music supplied by composer Daniel Pemberton. A lighter touch would have helped, as well as an occasional chance to remember what made I Love Lucy such a comedic treat. The players aren’t bad—Bardem and Simmons being especially on-target as Arnaz and Frawley, respectively—but their efforts are doomed by Sorkin’s somber approach.   

If you think back, we actually had fair warning that Being the Ricardos would be a bad idea. In 2006, NBC coincidentally premiered two series that were set behind the scenes of a sketch-comedy show much like Saturday Night Live: Tina Fey’s 30 Rock and Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Fey’s show, a comedy, ended up running for seven seasons, while Sorkin’s show, an ambitious and serious-minded drama, quickly lost viewers and was canceled after one.

The moral: If you set out to write about comedy, if helps if you do it with a sense of humor.

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Being the Ricardos (rated R) opens Dec. 10 in select theaters and Dec. 21 on Amazon Prime Video.

Where’s President Bartlet when you need him?

By Richard Ades

As a writer, Aaron Sorkin has had much success.

On TV, The West Wing was a critically praised hit. Onstage and at the cinema, A Few Good Men was a triumph.

But Sorkin also has had some failures. The most obvious was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a much-anticipated series that didn’t outlast its first season.

Then there’s The Farnsworth Invention, originally written as a movie that never quite came to fruition. Sorkin then rewrote it as a play that opened on Broadway in late 2007 and closed three months later after receiving mixed reviews.

It’s probably unfair to label this reality-inspired drama a failure, but you can’t really call it a success. Yes, you do learn something about the invention of television, but you can’t take this history lesson too literally, as Sorkin bends the facts to suit his purposes. What’s worse, even after taking liberties with the truth, he still doesn’t manufacture enough drama to yield an absorbing story.

Director John Dranschak and a strong cast do what they can to sell the tale in Gallery Players’ production, but they fail to weave Sorkin’s straw into theatrical gold.

The play tells the life stories of David Sarnoff (Ian Short), an immigrant who becomes a top executive in America’s early broadcast industry, and Philo T. Farnsworth (Stefan Langer), an American genius who’s determined to invent television. From the beginning, it’s obvious the two are antagonistic toward each other, but it’s not until halfway through that we actually find out why.

Did I mention that the play lacks drama? Fortunately, it also has some strengths.

If you’re into science, you may learn some interesting tidbits about the challenges Farnsworth and others faced as they tried to send images through the air electronically. If you’re into broadcasting, you may learn something about the early days of radio and television.

And if you’re just generally into American history, circa the 1920s and ’30s, you’ll no doubt glean some new understanding of the era. For instance, did you know that pretty much everyone back then had a potty mouth? Or, at least, they do in Sorkin’s version of that time period.

Cursing or otherwise, the supporting cast does a decent job of portraying the people who played major and minor roles in the development of television. Particularly prominent is Robyn Rae Stype as Farnsworth’s loving wife, Pem. Their sturdy efforts, along with those of Short and Langer, help to keep us from tuning out entirely as the play follows its anemic dramatic arc.

One more problem with the play: One gets the feeling that Sorkin is going out of his way to put Sarnoff’s actions in the best possible light—even when he uses questionable means to get what he wants, and even when Farnsworth gets screwed over as a result.

But don’t worry too much about Farnsworth. He actually came out better in real life than he does here, both during and after his run-in with Sarnoff.

To sum up: good production, bad history, bad drama.

Gallery Players will present The Farnsworth Invention through May 17 at the Jewish Community Center, 1125 College Ave., Columbus. Show times are 8 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Thursday (May 14 only). Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes (including intermission). Tickets are $20 ($15 JCC members), $18 for ages 60-plus ($13 JCC members), $10 for students and children. 614-231-2731 or www.jccgalleryplayers.org.