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It's a familiar story that "Judy" has trouble cooling off, at least until Zellweger picks up the mic.
Nearly 40 minutes pass before Renée Zellweger sings in "Judy". It's amazing that it takes so long. Director Rupert Goold's adaptation to the musical "End of the Rainbow" follows Garland in the last tragic passage of her life, as the 47-year-old enters a tumultuous tour while battling the demons of his life of showbiz troubled. Zellweger embodies the carefree and torn musical icon quite well in a dull, mundane saga that finds her struggling with her past, struggling with addiction issues and a broken family. It's a familiar story that "Judy" has trouble cooling off, at least until Zellweger picks up the mic.
At least the film is not entirely a biographical film about painting. Goold presents the character's rough childhood as a nightmarish set of surrealist memories and a macabre monstrosity that dominates the young performer in the form of the Louis B. Mayer studio mogul. "I make movies, Judy, but it's up to you to make those people dream," he said, watching as they wandered down the yellow brick road. It's a spooky starting point, but "Judy" comes back so often to these fragmented memories that they begin to feel like they're putting themselves in the shoes of a story that's spinning at the very beginning.
The contemporary circumstances of Garland are presented as a series of histrionic confrontations, sometimes with a bittersweet tangent. A dyspeptic package of frustration and fatigue, Garland forgets his rehearsal sessions to drink and pop pills, losing himself in his dark history. The film passes through some occasional bright spots, including his fifth wedding with Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock), but their romance has a particular flatness that has a shoe-horn quality. Garland's constant fears about the repercussion of the tour supervisor (Michael Gambon) are somewhat intriguing, but they look just as much like a note – Cliff Notes to an autopilot drama.
The only exception is a relationship forged by Garland with some gay British fans, including a moving performance by Andy Nyman that embodies Garland's ability to meet the needs of a marginalized community. His decision to go out with the couple for dinner after work hours is convincing enough that his one-act game is unique. Even so, even this touching subplot – where Garland impromptuously interprets "Get Happy" while his new friend is having fun – only goes deep.
But when Garland goes on stage, "Judy" comes alive. Goold is primarily a theater director and his latest feature, "True Story," showed little connection to this world. But his theatrical roots serve the energy of a film deeply invested in the psychological turmoil that has led Garland's extraordinary presence. The film finds its rhythm for a brief moment when Garland performs "The Trolly Song" while jostling young Judy (Darci Shaw) forced to take diet pills from her oppressive mother as she struggles in her early days of glory. The bubbling song contrasts ironicly with the disturbing nature of Garland's oppressive youth, and although the meta-quality of these sequences is generally telling, the child is almost always seen within the confines of a filming dark, but the music is raising them.
"Judy"
Like Zellweger, who produces more substance and sensations than anything in his filmography of the last decade (certainly, there was not much). In her first musical tour since "Chicago," she sings live and does such a strange job channeling Garland's performative forces that she practically communicates with Garland's ghost. Yet all that power and credibility collapses every time "Judy" returns to the airless melodrama that plagues the rest of the plot: yes, Garland's inability to keep custody of his children is another sad development in its infernal spiral, and drunken collapses set the stage for its demise. But in "Judy", they present themselves as spaces reserved to advance the story.
Fortunately, "Judy" offers a culminating performance inevitable from the beginning. When Zellweger sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in front of a bewitching audience, the song ends with an artificial moment that will not fail to invite glances. But the emotion sinks anyway, in part because it's almost impossible to screw up somewhere over the rainbow. Garland's legacy may be tricky to piece together, his legacy may be too big for any biopic, but the music speaks for itself.
Grade: C
"Judy" was premiered at the 2019 Telluride Festival. Roadside Attractions will be released in theaters on September 27, 2019.
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