BALL SKILLS (BEING THE RICARDOS)

Every now and again a film comes along where a performance is greater than the movie deserves.

Meryl Streep's Oscar winning turn as Margaret Thatcher in 'The Iron Lady' springs to mind.

Max Von Sydow elevates the disappointing 9/11 tale 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' with his performance as a mute man known as The Renter.

Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham obliterates every other performance in the otherwise toe curling 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves'.

We can now add to the list Nicole Kidman's Golden Globe winning turn as Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin's Amazon Prime flick 'Being the Ricardos'.

Sorkin is unquestionably one of the best screenwriters around on the big and small screen.

His mastery of zippy dialogue that packs a punch cannot be questioned.

His three forays into the director's chair, however, suggest the transition to filmmaker has been a bit more bumpy..

Sorkin got off to an impressive start as a director with the poker game tale 'Molly's Game' with Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba.

Then he delivered the watchable but dialogue driven courtroom drama 'The Trial of the Chicago Seven' for Netflix.

But while that film was undoubtedly well written, it suffered from being more theatrical than cinematic.

Crossing the streaming aisle to work with Amazon Prime, 'Being the Ricardos' sees Sorkin trying to push the boundaries as a visual storyteller.

That should be applauded but unfortunately, it's a frustrating watch.

Despite Sorkin's efforts, the film never quite engages in the way it should.

The narrative is framed around five turbulent days during the recording of 'I Love Lucy'.

It begins with John Rubenstein's producer Jess Openheimer, Linda Lavin's and Ronny Cox's writers Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll appearing as talking heads in a documentary reflecting on a week that nearly sank the hit show.

Sorkin peppers the film with their retrospective observations about that week, while the narrative flits between dramatic recreations of the events that took place and episodes from Lucille's marriage to Javier Bardem's Desi Arnaz.

As the cast and writers gather for a table reading of the week's script, Kidman's Ball and Arnaz are firefighting.

Their lovemaking the previous night has been interrupted by the broadcaster Walter Winchell telling his listeners that America's biggest TV star, Lucille Ball has been investigated for being a member of the Communist Party in her youth.

As executives from CBS and the Philip Morris tobacco company, which sponsors 'I Love Lucy,' try to work out if the story has legs, Lucille admits she was a member.

Desi, however, is keen that she claims she ticked a box accidentally which she is less keen to do.

The subsequent read through is a tetchy affair, with Lucille challenging the writers over every detail.

And as the week progresses, the tension mounts.

The cast bicker, the writers bicker and Lucille obsesses over the detail of every scene.

Sorkin also gives us episodes from their courtship and marriage.

We see Lucille encountering Desi on a film set at RKO Pictures where she is known as the Queen of the B Movies 

We also see them as a married couple in the post war years, with Desi touring the country and Lucille suspecting he is philandering.

The film shows Ball suffering a setback to her movie career, only to emerge with a hit CBS radio show 'My Favourite Husband' and that paves the way for 'I Love Lucy,' with her using her clout to get Desi on board in the hope that it might curb his infidelity.

As you expect from Sorkin, there's an awful lot packed into the narrative as 'Being the Ricardos' tackles the red scare, the responsibility and insecurity of being a Hollywood star, marital trouble and race.

And that's part of the problem because unusually for a Sorkin screenplay, it lacks coherence.

The narrative gets pulled all over the place and jumps around like a hyperactive frog.

On top of that, Sorkin seems more focused on crafting a handsomely shot tale instead of delivering his usually solid screenplay.

The film undoubtedly is handsomely shot, thanks to Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography which conjures up memories of the great 1950s melodramas.

However bizarrely for a Sorkin project, 'Being the Ricardos' lacks narrative discipline and its flashbacks from Ball and Arnaz's career just get in the way of a more compelling story about a week when a major Hollywood star's career was under threat.

Kidman props up the film with a crackling performance as Ball.

The Australian captures her character's mannerisms, vocal inflections and look - especially in the black and white sequences that recreate 'I Love Lucy'.

Like Meryl Streep's portrayal of Margaret Thatcher, it is a spot-on impersonation of a well known figure but is it Oscar worthy?

Bardem, who like Kidman has picked up a Screen Actors Guild nomination for his role, gives his all but is less convincing in a highly mannered performance as Arnaz.

Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat and Jake Lacy attack their roles as Jess Openheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll with gusto, revelling in Sorkin's snappy banter.

Nina Arianda and JK Simmons also relish playing  'I Love Lucy' co-stars Vivian Vance and William Frawley who were better known as Ethel and Fred on the sitcom.

Simmons, in particular, is a delight when he is onscreen as the gruff, heavy drinking, couldn't be arsed Crawley.

But as enthusiastic as the cast are, 'Being the Ricardos' can't quite shake off the feeling that it is trying to be too much to all women and men.

Is it a conventional biopic or an unconventional?

Is it a study of a rocky Hollywood marriage or a political drama?

'Being the Ricardos' feels like a movie searching for an identity.

While it is good to see Sorkin trying to stretch himself as a visual storyteller, it seems odd to be writing this but he really ought to get his focus back on the screenplay of his next story.

Get that right and you have the foundations to build a visually sumptuous film.

Otherwise you end up with a spicy but stodgy stew which 'Being the Ricardos' unfortunately is.

('Being the Ricardos' received a limited cinema release in the United States on December 10, 2021 before being made available for streaming on Amazon Prime on December 21, 2021)