Review: Judy (2019)

I truly hope that a lot of people see this movie. I think it’s a great film, one that would have been really successful if it had come out in the 2000s, but I worry that in our world of constant entertainment it will get lost in the crowd. I hope I’m wrong.

Judy Garland’s life is at once fascinating and tragic. There is so much more to her than Dorothy Gale. Her story is a cautionary tale of the pressures put on child stars by Hollywood and its stage parents. The film goes into this (somewhat unsuccessfully) with flashbacks to Garland’s youth. While these scenes are sometimes overwrought and overdramatic, they get their point across – the sad turns that this woman’s life took are the product of an unhealthy, dangerous Hollywood system and a mother with not so good intentions.

But the bulk of this movie takes place long after The Wizard of Oz. Renée Zellweger plays a Judy Garland in her late 40s, nearing the tragic end of her life. Zellweger’s performance is one of her best, and that is saying a lot given the strength of her filmography. She perfectly balanced Garland’s strengths and flaws, from her love for her children to her drug addiction, creating a character the audience can feel at once sympathetic and angry towards. Do I see a potential second Oscar in her future? I’d say I definitely see a nomination, unless the Academy is crazy and goes the Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers route.

The final scene includes, unsurprisingly, a performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” There was a lot of weeping going on around me, understandably. However, my friend commented that the 1969 audience viewing her performance getting up to sing with her made it all feel a little cheesy, and I have to say I agree. I almost wish they had let her finish the song and then ended it, but maybe that’s not the Hollywood ending a Hollywood movie is going for.