Judy

Year 13, Day 134 - 5/14/21 - Movie #3,839

BEFORE: Sorry about the thematic whiplash - I probably should have mentioned that even though this week started out being about complicated family relationships and secrets, but it wasn't ALL going to be about that - it's also about famous actors and their self-destructive behavior, umm, and also farm animals.  After watching the last days of Hervé Villechaize, I'm back on the circling-the-drain celebrity beat with this film about Judy Garland, and then tomorrow, I'm back on to talking animals, you see how that all connects, right?  

Andy Nyman carries over again from "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon". 

THE PLOT: Legendary performer Judy Garland arrives in London in the winter of 1968 to perform a series of sold-out concerts. 

AFTER: The Oscars, right, THAT should be the common thread between yesterday's film about farm animals and aliens and this one.  "Farmageddon" was nominated this year for 2020's Best Animated Feature, and Renée Zellweger won for Best Actress LAST year for 2019's "Judy".  Whew, I feel a lot better now, I'm not just jumping around randomly, turns out I'm just knocking off the recent Oscar-nominated films that I haven't seen.

Did she deserve it?  Aw, hells yeah.  By the time she gets around to "Over the Rainbow" (which they save for the end, natch) you barely know where Zellweger ends and Judy Garland begins - so, umm, where's the Oscar for Pete Dinklage channelling Hervé or Jim Carrey becoming Andy Kaufman?  All Carrey got was a Golden Globe, and now he probably has to send that back in protest over their lack of diversity.  Same goes for Taron Egerton in "Rocketman" (full disclosure, I dubbed "Judy" to the same DVD as "Rocketman", because I'm funny that way - two biopics from 2019 about gay musical icons, get it?).

"Judy" would have us believe that the deck was stacked against Judy Garland from the start - her early years in Hollywood, making pictures with Mickey Rooney, were filled with uppers, downers and publicist wranglers telling her that she could never eat any food or have any fun.  Plus she had Louis B. Mayer managing her career, and it seems like maybe he was the Harvey Weinstein of his day, in all the bad ways.  The film falls JUST shy of saying that anything untoward happened between them, but we see him fawn over her, almost touch her inappropriately and then belittle her to make her feel fat, ugly, all-around "less than" because it suited him to do so. But there's no possible way that all that could have screwed up her later relationships with her husband(s) and children, right?  Oh, but of course it did.  

The former Frances Ethel Gumm (seriously...) was married five times, to David Rose, Vincent Minnelli, Sid Luft, Mark Herron, and Mickey Deans - this film barely mentions hubbies 1, 2 and 4, and chooses to focus on her interactions with #3, Sid Luft, because while her financial state forces her to travel to London for a 5-week run at the Talk of the Town nightclub, Sid also wants custody of their two kids, and since the kids can't travel to the U.K., everything just sort of works out here, at least for a while.  Before leaving, Judy meets Mickey Deans at a party at her daughter Liza Minnelli's house, and then he surprises her in London, soon becoming husband #5, with a plan to open up Garland movie theaters around the U.S. and get her out of debt.  

(Honestly, it's a good thing this film decided to narrow the focus to just a few months out of Judy's life, because from what I just read on Wikipedia about how many affairs Judy had in Hollywood, the list of actors is so long that any film about her life and relationships would quite quickly become a mini-series, at least.  Glenn Ford? Orson Welles?  Judy got around - but no, remember, this is all Louis B. Mayer's fault, for making Judy feel like she was never good enough, thus craving the attention of so many men over the years, or something...)

Really, though, I don't know too much about Garland's music - "Over the Rainbow", sure, and I know "The Trolley Song" from "Meet Me in St. Louis", too.  And they even found a way to sneak in that version of "Get Happy" where it's sung in counterpoint to another song, I know she performed a duet/mash-up of that with Barbra Streisand singing "Happy Days Are Here Again", obviously they couldn't get Babs, so Zellweger sings that here in the apartment of a gay couple who came to her show, who she ends up cooking eggs for, because I guess Judy never slept, not like a normal person anyway.  I suppose I knew "For Once In My Life", but then once the film got to "Come Rain or Come Shine", "San Francisco" and "By Myself", I was a bit out of my depth.  And then you just GOTTA end the film with "Over the Rainbow", just like the Rolling Stones HAVE to play "Satisfaction" as an encore.

Judy's shows in London go well, but only until she starts drinking again - then they sort of became famous for being infamous, with Judy passing out on stage or heckling the hecklers, and eventually she's replaced by Lonnie Donegan, who really was the biggest star in the U.K. music scene before the Beatles ruined everything for him.  Who can forget his big smash hit, "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)" and I swear, I'm not making that up, that was a real hit novelty song in the U.K., look it up.  Donegan is just about to take the stage, when Judy (who just showed up to watch Lonnie sing, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you...) asks politely if she can do one number before he begins his set.  Don't be a fool, man, once you let Judy Garland have the stage, you'll never get it back again!  

I've got one more celebrity bio-pic to get to this month, next week I should be able to link to "Bohemian Rhapsody", at long last.  Hmm, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Hervé Villechaize, Judy Garland and Freddie Mercury, all in the same month?  Hey, I'm down for it if you are. 

Also starring Renée Zellweger (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Jessie Buckley (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Finn Wittrock (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Rufus Sewell (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Michael Gambon (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Fenella Woolgar (ditto), Richard Cordery (last seen in "The Wife"), Bella Ramsey (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Darci Shaw, Royce Pierreson, Phil Dunster (last seen in "All Is True"), John Dagleish (ditto), Daniel Cerqueira (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Arthur McBain, Gemma-Leah Devereaux, David Rubin, Lewin Lloyd (last seen in "The Aeronauts"), Gus Barry, Tom Durant-Pritchard, Adrian Lukis, Lucy Russell (last seen in "Tristan + Isolde"), Bentley Kalu (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Martin Savage, John MacKay, Natasha Powell (last seen in "About Time"), Tim Ahern (last seen in "Phantom Thread"), Ed Stoppard (last seen in "Youth"), Arthur McBain.

RATING: 5 out of 10 blackouts