An average movie

To be honest, I can’t say I was/am very knowledgeable about Judy Garland’s life and career but, since my wife was interested in this movie, I though we might as well check it out together. Well, I’m not surprised that Renée Zellweger got so much praise for her work as she probably gave here the best performance of her career. Of course, I can’t say I knew how Garland was at the end of her life but Zellweger completely disappeared and I definitely believed in this character. Even her singing was impressive, in fact, she was so good that my wife was convinced that she didn’t do the singing herself which she obviously did. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie didn’t turn out to be so impressive though. Indeed, to make a biopic about a specific time period of the life of an artist can work but to make a biopic focusing only on the end of their life is usually a bad idea and this movie was a good example. Indeed, in this case, you start with Judy Garland on the ropes physically, emotionally and financially and, at the end, she was basically in exactly the same situation, with slightly more money I guess, but it all felt really flat, predictable and not really interesting. As a result, the flashback scenes, which were there to provide some context on how Garland actually ended up in this position, were actually more intriguing because I was wondering what did happen afterwards. To make things worse, none of the supporting characters were developed whatsoever and I felt mostly bad for Jessie Buckley, such a talented and fascinating actress, who ended up with a really thankless part. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is work a look though, if only for Zellweger’s fine performance. 


6/10