Mediocrity at its finest. Nothing about this film felt special, and especially coming from a man as acclaimed as Aaron Sorkin this comes as a huge disappointment. The thing that stops this film from becoming painfully bad is simply the performances. While nothing outstanding, all the actors are delivering performances that keeps the film entertaining and somewhat amusing. It was fun to have Tony Hale in a more human role.
As usual with a Sorkin film, the side characters are perfectly cast and thoroughly fun to watch, even in moments where their writing is nonsensical. The lead performances from Bardem and Kidman are interesting. Bardem has this effortless charm that comes across quite well yet his character often lacked depth. Kidman was the complete opposite, showcasing deep emotions but never reaching the comedic charm that Ball was known for.
Many are critiquing that this film doesn’t work as it’s Sorkin directing, and he should stick to writing, but honestly I think the writing is a detriment to the film too. The narrative structure for one is all over the place. Having faux confessionals of the writers in the future retell both the story of how Desi and Lucille met and the week that their marriage fell apart yet framing neither of these stories from the writer’s perspective felt so weird. Also if their wasn’t a confession to explain what story was being shown, it was hard to discern what story was happening at that point.
The film has three concurrent stories: one in the past of how they met, the media saying Lucille is a communist and the suspicion in Lucille that Desi is cheating on her. However most of the runtime isn’t focused on this, it’s focused on Lucille diving into work to distract herself but all this ends up becoming is a technical exploration of how an episode of I Love Lucy worked. Then at the end we get resolution to the Communism story, which was explored a bit more, and an abrupt end to their marriage that was never explored at all and is summed up in end title cards. And we’re supposed to care about that?
There’s so many odd story choices like that: J.K Simmons out of nowhere having a rant about older men not being loved, the flip of Alia Shawkat’s character being dismissed at the end for being young. It was just disappointing to have such a messy script coming from someone as acclaimed as Sorkin, the film has no idea what it wants to be but at least Nicole Kidman is a girlboss? The film leaves a lot to be desired but I don’t think this should solely be blamed on the direction, there needs to be a good script to work with to begin with.
★
★★