Aaron Sorkin loves watching talented people do what they do best. In his latest film, the biopic “Being the Ricardos,” Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) displays what her husband, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), calls her “kinesthetic gift.” She envisions the now-famous scene from “I Love Lucy” in which her character, Lucy Ricardo, travels to Italy and stomps in a barrel of wine grapes. Ball realizes that her character needs to lose an earring in the vat for maximum comic impact. This epiphany happens in slow-motion, tense music underneath, accompanied by the abrasive roar of the studio audience laughter. The original scene is fondly remembered because it’s funny. But there’s no trace of humor in this sequence, no lightness of touch. Sorkin’s interest lies in the competence, not the comedy.
Of all the writer-directors to take on the story of Lucille Ball, Aaron Sorkin is both a sensible and a terrible choice. His penchant for professional powerhouse women with messy personal lives means he has been in training to make this movie for decades. (Think of Jessica Chastain’s tough cookie title character in “Molly’s Game” or any woman — younger than 50, that is — in “The Newsroom.”) Simultaneously, his fetishization of this archetype often veers into exploitative territory, as though engineered by that guy friend who shrugs and says, “What can I say? I like ‘em crazy!”
“Being the Ricardos” is not all bad: Kidman and Bardem share legitimate chemistry, while the supporting actors pull off their rapid-fire dialogue even when the script goes sideways. The jaded, sophisticated language, the glamorous Los Angeles architecture, the dramatic lighting — it’s all very film noir. (This might be an homage to Ball’s early roles in films such as “Lured” and “The Dark Corner,” or maybe Sorkin just digs noirs, as do I.) And I’ll admit, despite myself, that most of the emotional beats landed, even the one involving everyone’s favorite deus ex machina … J. Edgar Hoover? Still, there’s something amiss in “Being the Ricardos,” something beyond the familiar critiques of Sorkin: the too-clever-by-halfness, the masculine posturing, the preachy monologuing.
It’s that Sorkin isn’t a fan — of Lucy, of sitcoms, of any comedy that isn’t his own.