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Let’s talk about those elephants in the room: it seems all wrong that Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem are playing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 1953-set Being the Ricardos, doesn’t it? They’re both obviously too old; the poised and willowy Kidman doesn’t have the brass or rubberband-looseness we associate with Ball; and Bardem is almost leonine — an actor whose formidable presence can fill a space even when he’s silent — when we think of Arnaz as unreservedly lively. 

Somehow, the head-scratching casting winds up being not a movie-wrecking distraction but a point of offbeat intrigue. These actors are enough of chameleons to (mostly) seem right here even though they’re wrong; we eventually come to think of them simply as Lucy and Desi with harder edges than we’re used to. Collectively, Bardem and Kidman turn out to be the biggest reason to see this movie in which they give respectively good and great performances: this backstage drama, while energetic and engaging, is doing so much at all times that it becomes the filmic equivalent of a person spread too thin, momentarily efficient but more than anything noncommittal. 

Read the full column on 425.