Judy is a biopic about the last year in the
life of actress/singer/entertainer extraordinaire, Judy Garland, starring Renée Zellweger. Garland is trying to hold on and to pick up the
pieces during a brief run at the Talk of the Town theater in London. Things
don’t go so well.
Garland, of course, rose to fame as Dorothy Gale in the
classic movie Wizard of Oz in 1939, immediately followed by her girl-next-door
role in Babes In Arms (1939), co-starring with Mickey Rooney. In Wizard,
at the ripe young age of 16, she gave us the perennial classic Over the Rainbow.
After that, she remained in the spotlight with several more popular “Andy Hardy
pictures”, again with Rooney, followed by the smash hit Meet Me In St. Louis
in 1944, which she headlined. In that
film, she introduced three more songs which quickly became American songbook
standards: The Trolley Song, The Boy Next Door and Have Yourself
A Merry Little Christmas. Other cinema successes include Easter Parade
(1948) and the first musical version of A Star Is Born (1954). In the 1950s and early 1960’s as her
film career was fading, Garland became a huge concert attraction in venues large
and small, as well as in a number of television specials. One of many highlights
was her Carnegie Hall concert in 1961, the recording of which produced a hit
Grammy award winning double album which stayed on the billboard chats for
nearly two years (95 weeks). Judy Garland was a tremendous star at this point and this
concert was called by many “the greatest night in show business history.”
Garland was also famous for the tumult of her personal
life: numerous marriages and divorces (five of the former, four of the latter plus
a separation from her fifth/final husband), getting fired or removed from several movie projects due to drug
and alcohol abuse, nervous breakdowns, hypochondria, and associated
unreliability; as well as a lavish lifestyle and attendant financial difficulties
including massive federal tax liens, which eventually resulted in the loss of
her Southern California home and the seizure of most of her earnings. Without a
permanent home, with little money and deteriorating health, Garland went to
Europe in early 1969 to try and revive her career. Six months later she was
dead at age 47.
Judy picks up Garland’s story at this final
stage of her life. We see her as a once great but now doomed creature, beloved by her fans, addicted to adulation, but fatally flawed by her self-doubt, substance abuse and other demons. While the film aims to give us a tragedy, Garland herself, as well as her children and many of those closest to her have rejected such a simplification of her life – including the later years. Theatrically (and cinematically) a tragedy generally
only works to evoke our sympathies when, before her downfall, the protagonist
first earns our admiration and/or respect. Judy never gives us
that chance. I suspect that the vast majority of current moviegoers may have
heard of Judy Garland and may even have some awareness of her reputation as a dazzling
entertainer of the mid-twentieth century; but precious few, I’d guess, are
serious fans or have ever even seen or listened to Garland in performance. The
movie tells us that Garland was a great and celebrated singer-entertainer
in her day; but this is not demonstrated in any way – not even via flashbacks;
it is just a given, something we are supposed to know going in or simply accept
on faith.
As a result, despite a hell of an effort by Zellweger, all
we get is a detailed downer about the final descent and degradation of a former
big star. More bathos than pathos. I can’t even call Judy mawkish
or oversentimental, as there’s little opportunity to become emotionally
involved in Garland’s escalating often self-generated difficulties. As to why
she was such a mess, we get a few flashbacks to her early years as teenager
breaking into the movie business – how she was bullied by MGM’s Louis B Mayer,
required to take amphetamines to stay alert during long shooting days and barbiturates
to sleep, told that she was not pretty, too fat, etc. But Garland’s show biz
career started long before 1938 – starting in 1924 when she was just two-and-a-half performing with her family
in vaudeville, and then with her older sisters in a singing act through 1935. After
1938, of course, came her amazing career and her eventful, often tempestuous personal
life. These two periods pre- and post-1938, which is to say her entire life
before and after her earliest Hollywood experiences, are left out of the movie
and barely even alluded to. It’s an understatement to say that the few flashbacks
portraying her abuse by Mayer and the studio are a hell of a simplification.
The film is based on a stage musical drama by Peter Quilter,
which achieved moderate success in London’s West End and in a six-months run on
Broadway in New York in 2012. But what might have worked on stage does not do
so well in this screen adaptation.
Zellweger works her butt off trying to bring the late period
Judy Garland to life. She actually is made up and dressed to kind-of look like her. She’s a terrific actress, and in the dramatic bits she’s quite effective. As we learned in her portrayal of Roxy Hart in Chicago (2002), Zellweger
can sing pretty darn well, too. But she’s
no Judy Garland – even acknowledging that the film takes place in the star’s
last year, when she undoubtedly had lost a little something. Zellweger doesn’t
have Garland’s range, her trademark tremolo, or her musicality - by which I
mean her wholehearted engagement body and soul with the songs she was singing.
It’s a quality only a few special singers have – Frank Sinatra being another great
example. I’ve never been a huge fan of Garland’s often histrionic style, but
her musical commitment is unmistakable. Watch a video of Judy Garland, such as this one from 1964, and
check out how it’s so much more than her voice; how she’s totally in synch with
whatever she’s singing (as well as what the band behind her is doing): her
phrasing, her body language, how her hands, shoulders, feet and even her eyes
reflect the music.
Zellweger is good, and her performance may be a reason to go
see Judy; but she can’t save the movie. Nor can decent work from
other members of the cast. These include Rufus Sewell (Cold Comfort Farm [1995],
The Man in the High Castle [2015-18]), who plays Sid Luft, Garland’s
third husband, her manager/producer from the early 1950s through the early
1960s, and the father of two of her three children. In Judy, the marriage and
the business relationship have been over for a while, but there remains
friction over custody of the children. To Garland, Luft is an adversary, to us however,
as personified in a nice turn by Sewell, he is the voice of reason. There is a
nice, warm performance by Jessie Buckley (Chernobyl [2019]) as Garland’s
minder during the Talk of the Town gig. Finn Wittrock does a good job playing
cad-ish character: Mickey Dean, Garland’s fifth and last husband and would-be
dealmaker. Andy Nyman is especially
touching as Dan, a gay man for whom Garland is an idol.
I had high hopes for Judy, based on pre-release buzz about
Zellweger’s performance. But this melodrama is a no-hanky affair. In other
words, not to put too fine a point on it, a dud.
1 hour 58 minutes Rated
PG-13
Grade: C
In wide release.
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