Short Takes : ‘Lucy & Desi’ Film Criticized

Lucie Arnaz criticized as distorted a forthcoming CBS movie about her parents, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, that includes scenes of her father’s reputed infidelity.

“Lucy & Desi: Before The Laughter,” scheduled to air Sunday also focuses on the couple’s career conflicts.

“This is not their lives,” Arnaz, 39, says in the Feb. 9 issue of TV Guide. “This is as much a cartoon of their lives as any unauthorized fiction.”

Arnaz, the couple’s firstborn, says the movie is “extraordinarily biased” to make her mother look like a hero and her father a villain.

“They were together 20 years, and they shared equal responsibility for the joy and the pain,” said Arnaz, who is starring in a new CBS series called “Sons and Daughters.”

Executive producer Larry Thompson defended the movie, calling it a “truthful but loving” portrait.