![]() I appreciate the filmmakers not wanting to sink into the sort of lurid voyeurism that often mires the biopic genre, but there’s a sheen to this version of events that takes away from the seriousness of Garland’s plight. ![]() We see brief glimpses of those bad performances but moments of the nightclub workers trying to get her stumbling form into a dress and on stage are often scored to peppy music as if these are moments to laugh with. Zellweger captures so many of Garland’s mannerisms, as well as the sense of humor that kept her head above ground during tough times, but the movie avoids depicting the real depths of that darkness. In many ways, Judy loves Garland too much to show just how bad things got towards the end. In theory, I respect it, but in practice, it feels like a disservice to a woman who’s been screwed over enough by history as it is. ![]() Judy is smart enough to focus on one point in her life, with glimpses of her origin, which is at least a more cohesive way to get the job done. No biopic can pull that off any plenty of movies have sunk into flop status trying to cover several decades in one linear narrative. This formula, however, means that there’s no way the fullness of Garland’s own life can be conveyed in a mere two hours. It’s not hard to see why she would be so drawn to Judy Garland’s story, especially this period in her short life that is typically overlooked when her life is retold. Zellweger gets plenty of big awards-season friendly scenes to show off her range, including a lovely singing voice and reminds the audience of just how criminally underappreciated she’s become after many years at the top. Of course, this is a film that mostly exists to be the foundations of a great performance, so in that aspect, it’s a job well done. As I mentioned in my review from TIFF, you can practically predict every narrative step it’s going to make and set your watch to its ‘twists’. The film makes brief flashbacks to Garland’s past, as she was working on The Wizard of Oz and doing endless promotional work for her studio, MGM.Įverything about Judy is painfully conventional in the way biopics often cannot help but be. The film covers the last months of her life during that Talk of the Town residency, showing her at her lowest ebb as she tried to scrape together enough gigs to pay off her debts and fund a home for her youngest children. I thought about those words a lot when I eventually saw Judy, the Renee Zellweger starring biopic that was released last month to a bevy of Oscar buzz. He describes Garland that night as ‘a frail little sparrow crushed in an iron fist,’ a woman being devoured ‘like a vulture on a battlefield’ by the anthem that made her an icon. Lloyd Webber coldly notes that the more accurate term would have been ‘non-perform’, as Garland ‘was an hour late on stage and the dinner-theatre crowd, fuelled by the cheap house champagne’ ended up throwing coins on stage as she tried to stumble her way through ‘The Trolley Song.’ Then she tried to sing her signature song ‘Over the Rainbow’ as ‘the booing and whistling grew louder and louder’. In 1969, Garland was performing a residency at the Talk of the Town nightclub in London, only a few months before her tragic death. ![]() There’s a moment in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s autobiography Unmasked where he describes going to see one of the last-ever concerts given by Judy Garland.
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