I wasn't sure I was going to be interested in this because I'm not a huge "I Love Lucy" fan. However, the deep dive into this harrowing week for Lucy and the show's cast was very interesting. The relationships between the characters were taken a little past the surface, Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem stole the show, and the auxiliary characters all played their roles well. I gave it 4 stars because I could recommend this to anyone. If you have a serious problem with an actor not perfectly playing an actual person, then you may just be unrealistic. It isn't easy to play an icon.

The good stuff:
** The characterizations of Lucy and Desi were wonderful. We learned how each had a great mind for the business, but also respected each other's career.
** Alia Shawkat as Madelyn Pugh, the only female writer in the room, was wonderful. Both funny and tough, I imagine she paved the way for many women to penetrate the production teams in TV and movies.
** The director of this movie did a great job presenting each aspect of the dumpster fire this one week appeared to be.

The bummers:
-- I don't think the documentary style was a great idea. I liked some of the dialogue there, but it just wasn't necessary.
-- 2 hours, 13 minutes is a little long for a movie like this.

Javier did an amazing job.
I did not believe Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball. She nailed the voice yes but body language & facial expression NO. I have have seen plenty of interviews and such of Lucille Ball not playing a character and just being herself and Nicole Kidman did not get it done here at all.
Also, maybe the name of the movie should have been “Lucille Ricardo” because it was about Lucy and HER choices and HER feelings about her career and her marriage.
You see very little of this story from Desi’s perspective. Everything about Desi we see it viewed through the lens of Lucy’s feelings, fears, insecurities and worries.
It was a good movie but I felt like there were some wrong decisions taken creatively here.
The casting of the Lucy, the title of the movie and also another issue which I won’t mention because it’s spoiler but it effects my over all feeling on this movie.
It was good and I may watch it again just because I like movies about real people and history and because Javier Bardem and J.K. Simmons were so damn amazing in it! BUT it does not deserve a Best Picture nod or a Best Actress nod at all.

There are two lines of dialogue in Being the Ricardos that really caught my attention. One is “I literally said that 30 seconds ago,” and the other is “It takes fewer words to say that than the truth.” This film feels like a lot of the former when it should be more of the latter.

Why does a movie called Being the Ricardos spends so much time on Ethel/Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and Fred/William Frawley (J.K. Simmons), whom nobody cared about 70 years ago, and no one cares about today?

Speaking of redundant characters, writer/director Aaron Sorkin aims to give the film a documentary feel with asides set in the present day in which people involved with the production of I Love Lucy talk about it — kind of like in Reds, except that Reds worked because the individuals interviewed were who they were supposed to be, and not actors playing aged versions of people who are already played by other, younger actors in the main narrative.

These parentheses do little but repeat things we have just seen, or are about to see, dramatized in the scene immediately before or after (either show or tell — preferably show —, but not both); they have no value other than as filler, and filler is exactly the last thing a two-hour-plus movie needs.

Ostensibly, the plot revolves around a typical week on I Love Lucy’s set, including rehearsals, filming, etc. — and indeed a fly-on-the-wall behind-the-scenes approach to the inner workings of one of the most influential TV shows history should be able to generate more than enough interest on its own.

Sorkin, however, brings up momentous events only to gloss them over. For example, Lucille Ball (an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem in the perfect role for his routine massacre of the English language) are having a second child (although their firstborn is so irrelevant to Sorkin that she is named a couple of times and seen only once), and they both decide that Lucy and Ricky will have a kid too; this aspect is mentioned, and even discussed, but never really addressed, and the reason for this omission is obvious: since, as I already pointed out, the central section of the film takes place over the course of a week (with flashbacks that become an unnecessary distraction), her pregnancy never gets a chance to be truly incorporated into the plot.

Another incident that Sorkin touches on but doesn’t even begin to explore is when Ball was accused of being a communist. This is treated as no more than a minor annoyance, but surely it should have affected her career much more than the film lets on —and if it didn’t, what was it that made Ball so special that this didn’t even qualify as a bump in the road?

All things considered, Being the Ricardos devotes way too much time to extracurricular activities. Sacrificing length for depth might have turned this 125-minute behemoth into a much more manageable 90-minute romp.

I vaguely recall watching "I Love Lucy" - or perhaps I just recall that memorable theme tune, but I have to say I knew nothing at all about the "Desilu" couple before watching this. As ever, it has Sorkin's trademark dialogue - quickly paced, pithy at times; but somehow the performances just didn't catch fire. Kidman is a very versatile actress, she can turn her hand to just abut anything - but for this to have worked better, she would have needed a more convincing foil. Javier Bardem just isn't him. Their lively relationship is suggested rather than demonstrated and much of what made them the US household names they were is, again, just taken for granted. Their domestic status as super-stars was not replicated globally, and yet little time is spent trying to explain to those less familiar just who they were and why they were so popular. JK Simmons is effective as their co-star "Bill Frawley" and all told it is a watchable biopic, but for me it looked more like a labour of love for an auteur who was maybe just a bit too close to the subject matter, and who made assumptions that the rest of us would be also. It looks great, has a ping at the Communist witch-hunt apparatus in place at the time, but is all just to shallow for me. I bet there is a proper, deep-drama, to be made about this pair, though - just not this film.