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If you watch the "I Love Lucy" episodes and think she was funny, she is just as serious an actress as she was a comic. This is one of the most heart-touching movies I have ever seen and one of the few that has made me cry, that's saying more than I care to admit but it's true. If you ever get a chance to see this film please, don't pass up the opportunity!!

Lucille Ball was 74 when she made this movie. Not only was it shot on location in New York but it was summer time and unusually HOT. The rumors are that Lucy fainted a number of times during the filming because of the heat.

Now putting those things aside, I felt this was one of Lucy's greatest performances but as per usual many "critics", not all, had negative things to say about her performance. I have often said too many people expected to see "Lucy Ricardo" in anything that Lucy did, and frankly that wasn't fair to her but, who says Hollywood is fair!

The casting of Daphne Zuniga was a mistake. I never felt the connection between the characters was good. In truth Lucy carried this entire movie as far as I am concerned, unfortunately some areas of the movie suffer because of it.

With that said, I highly recommend this movie! Lucy is wonderful in it and it is worth a Sunday night.

Now the question is can you find the movie?

I think our Lucy gave one of her best in this film. She is always one who was never afraid to look ugly (on film, anyway). She is just great and I am so sorry that the rest of the cast is under par and never really matches her power as a performer. I was able to view it at the Museum of Television and Radio and I highly recommend it for any one who is a fan of the first lady of television.

I spent considerable time exploring and writing about the neighborhood and the world of this story, in the eighties and early nineties. I'm still not quite sure why it took me until 2021 to watch this rather passionate, thought provoking, socially significant and insightful film. And I can't imagine why it wasn't embraced by the public and the reviewers alike. It took seeing Being the Ricardos and listening to the ten part TCM Lucy podcast to inspire me to finally track this one down.

Of course, it's harder to do great comedy, especially in front of a live audience, than it is to do serious acting, with short takes that are shot from nine different angles. Still, Lucy truly showed her acting chops, in what was to be her last film role. She'd played a serious, dramatic and memorable character opposite Henry Fonda, in The Big Street, forty plus years earlier. That's a film people remember and that pops up on classic film stations, on occasion. This one seems to have all but faded to oblivion. If Ben Mankowitz hadn't talked about this film in the last chapter of the TCM Lucy podcast, it might have been another thirty five years before I got around to it.

I give it 8 stars rather than 10 because there are a few cliches. However, cliches do tend to come from reality and I do know, from studying and exploring the subject matter that the film captured that reality.

As I said in my review of the spectacular Being the Ricardos, you will see sides of Lucy in that film that you haven't seen before. After fifty five years in Hollywood, much of which was spent playing a zany wacky character, for Lucy to transform into this street bag lady, with such truly authentic credibility, shows even more range for this truly brilliant legend. Anyone who wants to experience the full gamut of Lucille Ball needs to watch this one.

I only saw this movie once,when it first was broadcast. I would absolutely love to own a video of this movie,it is such a departure of what you expect of Lucille Ball. I cried when I saw this movie and waited forever to see it again.