Nicole Kidman sounds a lot like Lucy in this film. I swear, if I had just been walking through the room when this was on and not looking at the screen, I would assume I Love Lucy play. However, she acts nothing like her. Lucy has a bigger energy that Nicole, who plays this just as subtly as everything she's in. Javier Bardem, meanwhile, gets both Desi's way of speaking and mannerisms down, but just looks so very unlike the original, you'd think Desi was being played by a different animal.
This just missing it goes beyond the casting, unfortunately. The idea of telling a story of the taping of one episode of the I Love Lucy comedy show sounds very intriguing. Perhaps, I thought, this will be less like a film and more like a play, big on drama, clever dialogue, tight plot. But that idea is undercut by really showing most of the story in flashbacks. And the thing with flashbacks is, they are great at giving the audience information, that's their purpose, but you just can't get emotionally invested in them. If they had just told the Lucy and Desi story in order: Desi leaves Cuba for the U. S., meets a struggling but talented actress, she gets her chance but it doesn't give her her break, she finds success in a way she hadn't planned on, they are happy until the cracks start to show. I mean, that's an interesting story and one I can get behind. Instead they given all that as a side order to the real story of this movie, which is, apparently, some hooey about Lucy once registering as a Communist and its being exposed not even making a blip on her career. Now come on, if you want to tell a story about the Red Scare, tell it about somebody it affected, like Charlie Chaplin or Trumbo--but I guess they've already made those movies so go watch them. In the mean time, I'll keep waiting for a movie that tells the Lucy and Desi story. I think it'd be pretty good.
This just missing it goes beyond the casting, unfortunately. The idea of telling a story of the taping of one episode of the I Love Lucy comedy show sounds very intriguing. Perhaps, I thought, this will be less like a film and more like a play, big on drama, clever dialogue, tight plot. But that idea is undercut by really showing most of the story in flashbacks. And the thing with flashbacks is, they are great at giving the audience information, that's their purpose, but you just can't get emotionally invested in them. If they had just told the Lucy and Desi story in order: Desi leaves Cuba for the U. S., meets a struggling but talented actress, she gets her chance but it doesn't give her her break, she finds success in a way she hadn't planned on, they are happy until the cracks start to show. I mean, that's an interesting story and one I can get behind. Instead they given all that as a side order to the real story of this movie, which is, apparently, some hooey about Lucy once registering as a Communist and its being exposed not even making a blip on her career. Now come on, if you want to tell a story about the Red Scare, tell it about somebody it affected, like Charlie Chaplin or Trumbo--but I guess they've already made those movies so go watch them. In the mean time, I'll keep waiting for a movie that tells the Lucy and Desi story. I think it'd be pretty good.