OVP: Judy (2019)

Film: Judy (2019)
Stars: Renee Zellweger, Finn Wittrock, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon
Director: Rupert Goold
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Actress-Renee Zellweger*, Makeup & Hairstyling)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I actually saw End of the Rainbow with Tracie Bennett, not on Broadway or even the West End, but when it made its American stage debut at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (for those who don't know, this blog is situated in Minnesota, which may explain why I occasionally struggle to be on the cutting edge of seeing some of the awards contenders).  I remember being absolutely astounded by the show, but mostly Bennett's raw look at the world of Judy Garland (a Minnesota treasure in her own right).  Garland's life has been told so many times, and been told definitively with Judy Davis & Me and My Shadows, but she brought a raw urgency to Garland's final years, where she was mostly just a shell of the vibrant force that was once a major movie star and a voice of a generation, and had long since lost her battle with pills and booze.  This is the Judy we're given in Rupert Goold's onscreen rendition of End of the Rainbow (renamed Judy cause heaven forbid we get a distinctive film title), which at once gives us a more intimate look into Garland's last stand, and also saddles it with an impossibly sad ending that it can't really recover from.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoiler Alerts) Judy Garland (Zellweger) is the mother of three children, the younger of two are living at home with her and the older of them enjoying her own start of fame (and like her mother, the demons that would come with it).  Judy is broke, and in order to make money since she can't get enough cash from American nightclubs (and is uninsurable on a film set thanks to her unprofessional behavior), she goes to London, where a packed out audience is waiting for her.  Judy is having an offscreen romance with her soon-to-be final husband Mickey (Wittrock), but that's as ill-advised as her consistent limit-pushing, using the same pills that once allowed her to work 18-hour days on the MGM lot to simply stay awake.  The movie alternates between her time on the set of The Wizard of Oz, with a creepy LB Mayer obsessed with controlling the "girl next door" and present-day Judy, whose demons are still there from that time in the spotlight.  The film ends on a high note, with Judy getting to have one great closing number of "Over the Rainbow" before the curtain closes (and we know that this comeback will be her last).

The movie is disappointing.  It can't really grab the electricity of the live play, where Bennett was able to give us a different kind of heightened Judy, manic but still bursts of genius coming out from a voice that won't come back.  Here the film is more preoccupied with trying to cover the bases of Judy lore, and almost every time it does so it fails.  At this point Garland's personal life is so famous we don't really need the flashbacks to her hellish time on the MGM lot, in many ways feeling like watching Bruce Wayne's parents die just to establish her current anguish-we know why Judy Garland is sad, we don't need it underlined.  Additionally, her relationship with Mickey Deans is confusing and underwritten-the writers clearly have an opinion on him (and it's not complimentary), but they don't have the guts to go after it, and instead just kind of depict him as a handsome leech.  About the only angle that felt genuinely interesting was an early scene where Garland is chatting with her daughter Liza Minnelli, who in 1969 was about to graduate from "Judy Garland's talented daughter" to a legitimate superstar.  Seeing the jealousy in Garland's eyes as she sees the world being laid bare for her daughter (while she, who has given her life to the entertainment industry, can't even get a job), is a challenging thing I've never seen a Garland biopic, and I kind of wish they'd explored this angle just a little bit further.

But biopics, especially ones based on musical superstars, are rarely about getting out-of-the-box, and instead are simply about a famous actor playing another famous person and singing the jukebox hits.  Zellweger uses her actual voice, a risky move while playing someone who was a considerably stronger singer than she is in real life, but let's face it-Garland in 1969 wasn't really "Judy Garland" anymore so having a less-talented singer take on the vocals isn't a fatal flaw.  Zellweger also resists the urge to imitate Garland's distinctive speaking voice, but in doing so she alienates herself too much from Judy.  I'm the last person to complain about a lack of mimicry in a biopic role (I think it's an overrated virtue), but I left Judy thinking that Zellweger hadn't successfully played a singer who was once the greatest in the world.  There's nothing there in her Judy that makes me bask in even a faded superstar, just an empty, funny celebrity who was brought down by pills.  The glamour, the movie star realness of Judy Garland isn't there even in a dilapidated capacity, and I felt the film & performance was hollow as a result.  You can tell she's trying, and every once-in-a-while she hints at what might be possible, but whether out of an urge to stray away from an impression or because Zellweger (who hasn't had a movie of this demand & pop culture importance in a decade) is out-of-practice, I felt her central work was flat.  Judy is a movie that could have been great, but unlike the real life Garland, it's not brought down by erratic swings-it's just too safe, unable to exhibit even a basic shred of originality.