電影《茱蒂》影評：[Film Review] Judy (2019) 6.9/10

A BBC production, the biopic of Judy Garland (1922-1969), directed by a workmanlike Rupert Goold, JUDY stars the 50-year-old Renée Zellweger as the American singer/actress/gay icon in her final days, when she relocates to London as a last resort to cash in her popularity as a residential performer in the Talk of the Town nightclub.

At the latter stage of her life, saddled with four failed marriages (with a fifth in the offing) and bad financial management, Garland is down and out, she has to leave her two young kids (not the adult Liza Minelli) to her ex-husband Sidney Luft (Sewell) in the States, in order to pursue the fat check in London, this is a tough decision and is exacerbated into an even tougher telephone exchange that she has to abort the notion of living with them (on the premise that when she earns enough dough to support a family) for their sake, yes, Judy Garland is a loving, dedicated mother, only curbed by the unforgiving circumstances, she is miserably separated from her children.

As a performer, Garland is exceptionally high-maintenance, witnessed by her initially disapproving assistant Rosalyn Wilder (a perspicacious and compassionate Buckley), but that is because as a child star, she has signed a pact with the devil, whose name is Louis B. Mayer (Cordery), whose inhuman, high-handed controlling of his most bankable asset is plumb appalling, which eventually subject her with chronic drug addiction and substance abuse, no wonder she acts like a prima donna, that is what her ailing body demands, inside, she is a good girl who only wants what everyone else wants, yet it proves, time and again, perversely elusive, the romance with her fifth hubby Mickey Deans (Wittrock in full adorable, puppy-like affectation) fizzles out as quickly as it ignites.

It would be utterly remiss to cover Garland’s story without foregrounding her legendary gay icon stature, but scenarist Tom Edge’s inclusion of a night out with two gay aficionados Dan and Stan (Nyman and Cerqueira), for all his good intentions, borders on cringe-worthy and lachrymose, who will believe a gay couple cannot confect a simple omelette? During her final rendition of SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW, their rapport feels stilted and forced, subtlety is sorely missed in the entire movie.

The gravitational pull of JUDY, of course, lies in Zellweger’s tour-de-force impersonation of Garland’s dainty physique, emotional strains and heartfelt plea (the maquillage job is a bonanza to her imitation), to say nothing of her voice range, being trained months to pull off the various music numbers (with visible hiccups to aptly indicate Garland’s own unstable state), Zellweger’s rousing comeback story is tailored for an Oscar-winning trajectory, she would be a shoo-in victor maybe a decade earlier, but now, with the Academy evolves with its more inclusive, youthful and international recruits, her chance is not as propitious as one surmises, especially the movie itself is, to put in milder words, a run-of-the-mill biopic incapable of distinguishing itself from its umpteen peers were it not for its protagonist’s top-shelf showmanship and its subject’s real-life tale of woe.

referential entries: Simon Curtis’ MY WEEK WITH MARILYN (2011, 6.0/10); Cameron Crowe’s JERRY MAGUIRE (1996, 7.2/10).