Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, comes a golden, shiny award for Renee Zellweger for playing one of Cinema’s greatest actresses to ever grace on the silver screen. Director Rupert Goold fully examines the hard spots of Judy Garland’s last living years in life while blending themes of childhood and family.
Set in the groovy times of 1969, Judy Garland (Renee Zellweger) is not really living well with her husband Sidney Luft, whom divorced her in the past, and her children. That soon leaves her having a relationship with night club owner Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock), which they both become friends.
However, there comes the big boulder to crush Judy’s life where she is called by an agent to tour in London, England. Garland is very much afraid to leave her children alone at that point of time.
Rosalyn (Jessie Buckley) is Judy’s tour manager and with her and Rosalyn, it might get very rocky here and there because either Judy can sometimes be late or she is tormented by her childhood.
Certain aspects of her personality seem to get out-of-character for Judy Garland when she performs on stage where anxiety and abuse issues come to play.
“Judy” is one of those performance-driven movies like “Black Mass” and “The Pursuit of Happiness” where it is the lead actor/actress that makes the film so riveting.
In this obvious scenario, Renee Zellweger perfectly transforms and is the character of Judy Garland. You can easily see the anxiety in her body system where you only see her as Judy than Renee Zellweger. The parts that definitely deems Oscar-worthy is when you really see Judy adapt to huge life changes.
It’s like a character study to certain extent.
For the past three years, we as an audience have been starting to notice this pattern with “Darkest Hour” and even “Bohemian Rhapsody” where the lead actor transforms into the character than noticing the actor.
It will be kind of a sin if Renee doesn’t win. No rhyme intended.
Her voice when she sings sounds exactly like Judy with songs such as “For Once in My Life” and the beautiful and climatic “Over the Rainbow”, which might be one of the most heartfelt endings of 2019.
It is nice that people are starting to see Jessie Buckley more on the big screen after the fantastic “Wild Rose” because she is incredibly under-appreciated in “Judy” playing as the tour manager Rosalyn. She is one of those tour managers that starts to be more of a friend during one scene where Rosalyn presents Judy a beautiful fireworks display.
Watching this movie as a huge fan of Judy’s work, I still cannot believe that Judy was abused so awfully on movie sets during her childhood. Seeing her act out with props on set just makes me never want to watch Judy Garland the same again the next time I watch “The Wizard of Oz”. I never knew this until now.
Not to lie, this movie has beautiful scenery throughout. From the looks of the stage at the Talk of the Town to the looks of both London and California, the movie’s sets feel ambitious from the first shot.
The main flaw I have with this movie is that it avoids to explain why she had to go to London and leave her kids. It completely lacks in that, which would have made my grade for this movie improve very high.
A personal nitpick with the film is the scenes where Judy gets abused on movie sets can feel a little corny at times where it might feel like a “Wonderful World of Disney” TV movie than a motion picture.
“Judy” works so well as a fanatastic character study where it asks the question, “What did Judy Garland do in life before she died?” Renee Zellweger desperately needs strong awards consideration for playing Cinema’s greatest actress of all time.
Grade: 8.5/10
