The critics haven't much liked this but Jack and I, as boomers who watched a lot of TV in the 1950s, did. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem give their all as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, as do J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda as William Frawley and Vivian Vance, heading up a big and notable cast.
Director/writer Aaron Sorkin employs his usual rapid-fire dialogue in the story of one tumultuous 1953 week in the filming of I Love Lucy, with flashbacks to the 1940s and flash forwards to modern-ish times. According to imdb, there are a number of anachronisms and factual errors, so just remember, it's not a documentary!
Daniel Pemberton's original score, a mix of moody tracks and sprightly drumming, can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere and is complemented by many songs, listed here.
Shout outs to the stellar work of director of photography Jeff Cronenweth and production designer Jon Hutman, who made us feel like we were there in colorful, glitzy Hollywood of the 50s and beyond. Makeup department head Ana Lozano and her team also made Kidman look a lot like Ball. They didn't transform Bardem, but apparently Lucie Arnaz has said that his acting was spot-on of her father.
This has a number of nominations, some of which are listed in my post about this year's nominations and awards sorted by title.
Kidman was last blogged for The Prom, Bardem for Everybody Knows, Simmons for Palm Springs, Arianda for Stan & Ollie, Sorkin and Pemberton for The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Cronenweth for the American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average of 68% and its audiences' of 75 show that they don't really love Lucy, but we enjoyed it a lot.
After streaming it on Amazon Prime January 11, we opened up the Paramount+ app and watched the two episodes covered in the movie: season 1, episode 22, when Fred and Ethel are squabbling; and season 5, episode 23, when Lucy stomps on the grapes in Italy.
No comments:
Post a Comment