Judy ** (2019, Renée Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon) – Movie Review

Throwing herself into the 2019 movie star biopic Judy to the max, Renée Zellweger gives an impressively showy, over-twitchy, mannered performance as Judy Garland, who comes in London in the winter of 1968 to perform a series of sold-out concerts at the Talk of the Town.

Tom Edge’s shaky, uneven screenplay is based on the stage play End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter. Though it is patchy, it offers some interesting dialogue and some witty lines, even if most of them are in the trailer.

Four good actors Jessie Buckley, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon have enough screen time but little to go on as Judy’s London assistant Rosalyn Wilder, Judy’s new husband Mickey Deans, Judy’s ex Sidney Luft and London impresario Bernard Delfont. It is all the Renée Zellweger Show, and she over-eggs the pudding, obviously feeling if she stops twitching, the audience will stop watching her.

Rupert Goold’s direction is rather nervous and creaky, as regularly afflicts a stage to screen translation, with somewhat low-budget looking production values, so there’s not much period re-creation or Sixties atmosphere. The film tells us little, certainly nothing new, about Judy Garland, who emerges continuously only as the pill-taking, alcohol-dependent, bankrupt neurotic of stereotypical legend, an always late, unreliable mess-up induced by MGM studio boss Louis B Mayer right back at the very start of her career. Oh, and boy can she sing, and, oh, she loves her children, though definitely from a distance.

It is exactly not a subtle film. Look at its ghastly stereotypical portrayal of two of Garland’s mincey gay fans of the era. Along with a lot of the film, it was no doubt well meant but clumsy, and didn’t feel exactly very real. Trying to be a heartwarming crowd-pleaser, there are so many showbiz and other cliches along the yellow brick road.

The film starts to drift and to get repetitive in the middle section, even becoming quite tiresome, before being rescued by its infallible musical numbers. Trading on Judy’s life and image, it feels intrusive, sometimes even invasive, though, to be fair, it perhaps means to celebrate the legend.

Inexplicably, Zellweger won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and a BAFTA Film Award for Best Leading Actress.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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