Somewhere Under The Rainbow - Judy
Biopics come in all sorts of flavors. The best of them manage to isolate certain life events and use movie magic to spin them into a real understanding of the subject. Unfortunately, Judy doesn’t have that. It is a fairly pedestrian, paint by numbers, portrait of a famous person whose cultural resonance has waned in the last few decades. The movie landscape is filled with examples of this—portraits that lack the contours of a life and the pizazz of an invented story.
But what makes Judy at least slightly different is that Renee Zellweger is going for it. This is a max effort of a performance that does manage to move the needle and be genuinely touching at times. It doesn’t necessarily save the film, but it does make it worthwhile.
The movie is told in two parts. A small portion of the movie is composed of flashbacks of a young Judy Garland facing the pressures of an old school Hollywood machine that forces her to conform to an unrealistic image. The bulk of the movie, however, follows Garland in the last six months of her life, as she is performing in London in an effort to get her life and career back on track.
When we meet the older Judy, she is doing small shows with her kids and struggling to find a place to sleep each night. Eventually, she leaves her kids behind to tour Europe in an effort to make enough money to take care of them. In a tragic tale of what happens when a star fades, none of her plans quite work out and the drugs and alcohol eventually get the best of her.
Judy Garland is one of the most legendary performers of all time. Expecting Renee Zellweger to match her on stage persona was always unrealistic. She does her own singing, but the movie does a bit of slight of hand to make sure she’s never doing Garland’s most famous songs on stage. Using lesser known hits means the audience has less of a reference for what Garland’s version sounded like. The result is a credible enough performance where Zellweger gets to ham it up and enjoy the ride. She definitely manages to bring an emotional heft to the decline of the legend.
What the film is lacking most, however, is grit. Garland’s late life was irredeemably sad and dark. And while the film doesn’t exactly pull any punches, their version of the drugs and alcohol come across as Disneyfied. At no point is Garland held responsible for her decline and the events of the movie mostly feel like they are happening to her, rather than happening because of her.
If you are someone who is fascinated by this time period or her catalog, there are definitely moments to enjoy. Famous faces like Mickey Rooney and Liza Minnelli dot the narrative in somewhat predictable ways. But that predictability gives the movie certain charms. This is a story you have pretty much already seen and you likely already know whether it’s for you.
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