Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

dannymike This is a very well-done TV movie. The production values are high, the acting is usually excellent, and the story is factual, for the most part. Honestly, I have seen few movie biographies that were as factual as this. Some details are incorrect and events that did happen are sometimes in the wrong order, but to me these are minor issues. I have seen biopics that captured most of the right details, but they were presented in a way that was not true to the spirit of what happened. While not 100% accurate, the spirit of the real-life personalities and events was usually captured. The most inconsistent thing in the movie is that virtually no one in the movie seems to age significantly, especially Danny Pino as Desi Arnaz. He looks like he ages five years (at the most) from 1940 to 1960. His performance is ten times better than the actor who played him in "Lucy and Desi: Before the Laughter," though. Pino plays Arnaz in a way that is slightly exaggerated and feels like an "impersonation" at times, but it is an effective performance. Rachel York does an excellent job playing Lucille Ball, although she is written to be a little more like "Lucy Ricardo" than the real Lucille Ball ever was. York has a "zany" or "ditsy" quality that Ball never had in real life. I enjoyed how the love and fun of Lucy and Desi's relationship came through as well as the tragedy. This movie had a nice balance of the fun times and the hard times. It also moves along at a quick pace, never really dragging. If you were to watch this movie and "Lucy and Desi: a Home Movie" (the definitive documentary on Lucy and Desi) back to back, you would find that most of the facts about their lives are accurately reproduced in this movie. Some casting could have been better (such as the actress who played Vivian Vance- she did not look, act, or sound at all like Vance) and in some cases the facts could have been better represented, but overall a well-produced, accurate, and entertaining movie.

SnowBrian Dramatic license - some hate it, though it is necessary in retelling any life story. In the case of "Lucy", the main points of Lucille Ball's teenage years, early career and 20 year marriage to Desi Arnaz are all included, albeit in a truncated and reworked way.The main emotional points of Lucy's life are made clear: Lucille's struggle to find her niche as an actress, finally blossoming into the brilliant comedienne who made the character Lucy Ricardo a legend; her turbulent, romantic and ultimately impossible marriage to Desi Arnaz; Lucy & Desi creating the first television empire and forever securing their place in history as TV's most memorable sitcom couple.As Lucille Ball, Rachel York does a commendable job. Do not expect to see quite the same miraculous transformation like the one Judy Davis made when playing Judy Garland, but York makes Ball strong-willed yet likable, and is very funny in her own right. Even though her comedic-timing is different than Lucy's, she is still believable. The film never goes into much detail about her perfectionistic behaviour on the set, and her mistreatment of Vivian Vance during the early "I Love Lucy" years, but watching York portray Lucy rehearsing privately is a nice inclusion.Daniel Pino is thinner and less charismatic than the real Desi was, but he does have his own charm and does a mostly decent job with Desi's accent, especially in the opening scene. Madeline Zima was decent, if not overly memorable, as the teen-aged Lucy.Vivian Vance and William Frawley were not featured much, thankfully, since Rebecca Hobbs and Russell Newman were not very convincing in the roles. Not that they aren't good actors in their own right, they just were not all that suited to the people they were playing. Most of the actors were from Austrailia and New Zeland, and the repressed accents are detectable at times.Although the main structure of the film sticks to historical fact, there are many deviations, some for seemingly inexplicable reasons. Jess Oppenheimer, the head writer of Lucy's radio show "My Favourite Husband" which began in 1948, is depicted in this film as arriving on the scene to help with "I Love Lucy" in 1951, completely disregarding the fact that he was the main creator! This movie also depicts Marc Daniels as being the main "I Love Lucy" director for its entire run, completely ignoring the fact that he was replaced by William Asher after the first season! Also, though I figure this was due to budgetary constraints, the Ricardo's are shown to live in the same apartment for their entire stay in New York, when in reality they changed apartments in 1953. The kitchen set is slightly larger and off-scale from the original as well. The Connecticut home looks pretty close to the original, except the right and left sides of the house have been condensed and restructured. There's also Desi talking about buying RKO in 1953, during Lucy's red-scare incident, even though RKO did not hit the market until 1957. These changes well could have been for dramatic license, and the film does work at conveying the main facts, but would it have hurt them to show a bit more respect to Oppenheimer and Asher, two vital figures in "I Love Lucy" history? The biggest gaff comes in the "I Love Lucy" recreation scenes, at least a few of them. It's always risky recreating something that is captured on film and has been seen by billions of people, but even more so when OBVIOUS CHANGES are made. The scene with the giant bread loaf was truncated, and anyone at all familiar with that episode would have noticed the differences right away! The "We're Having A Baby" number was shortened as well, but other than that it was practically dead on. By far the best was the "grape-stomping" scene, with Rachel York really nailing Lucy's mannerisms. The producers made the wise decision not to attempt directly recreating the "Vitametavegamin" and candy factory bits, instead showing the actors rehearse them. These scenes proved effective because of that approach.The film's main fault is that it makes the assumption the viewers already know a great deal about Lucy's life, since much is skimmed over or omitted at all. Overall, though, it gives a decent portrait of Lucy & Desi's marriage, and the factual errors can be overlooked when the character development works effectively.

bilahn Lucille Ball was a great comedian, but her life really does not lend itself to a 3 hour dramatic interpretation like this. There just isn't much that dramatic that happened. This biopic covers a lot of familiar territory, while adding nothing really new and interesting. There have been a number of documentaries on Lucy covering all this material, and watching the real people and archival footage is a lot more interesting than this play acting. It came across as a rote dramatization of events rather than an involving drama. The script is not at all good, and the "recreations" served only to illustrate why the real Lucy et al. were comic geniuses and these actors are not.Rachel York as Lucy fails to capture Lucy's essence. She definitely does not have her edge, especially as an older woman. As Ball approached middle age she came across as very tough and coarse, with a very raspy voice. (Though in fairness, I would think playing someone like Lucille Ball convincingly would be near impossible). Fred and Ethel are pathetic. And Bette Davis??!!Danny Pinto as Desi fares the best. He really got the accent down, and had some of Desi's swagger if not his hard edge as well. Needless to say, Desi was no where near as thin, handsome (and young) as Pinto. Not that was really a problem - staring at him was the main reason to watch this!Anyone expcecing something along the lines of the Judy Garland bio of a few years back will be sorely disappointed. Not even close.

KKaliforniApril22 It was on tv last night..kinda surprised no one has commented on it yet. I actually missed the first 20 minutes or so of this because the alarm didn't wake me like it should have, but the rest of the film was very gripping. I never realized how much drama there was in Lucille's life..it's quite sad to think about. She was very happy on-stage, clearly.The looks of the actors, Rachel and Daniel, were very off from the real Lucy and Desi (sometimes they actually find people who look like the people) which kinda threw me and made it hard for me to like see everything happening to the real Lucy. However their voices and accents were really good, so that helped. I noticed they kinda changed around a few things whenever they were recalling an episode...like the chocolate factory one...it was the bossy lady who called the machines to go faster..not Lucy..oh well. It's also sad that it ended so early in the story of their lives, but I suppose it was just to portray the story of "Lucy". It was still excellent and stuck in my mind.