Judy Cert: 12A, 1hr 58mins
Bridget Jones’s Baby apart, Renée Zellweger has been missing from British cinema screens for nearly a decade, the handful of films she has made during that period apparently not meriting a release on this side of the Atlantic.
But just when we might have been writing her off as a fading has-been, the former Chicago star comes storming back with a performance that may just land her a fourth Oscar nomination.
The only potential problem is that while she gives exactly that sort of performance – big, mannered and playing a much-missed Hollywood legend – she does so in a British-made film that doesn’t quite measure up to its American star. It’s good, but it’s Zellweger that’s great.
Just when we might have been writing Renée Zellweger off as a fading has-been, the Chicago star comes storming back with a performance that may just land her a fourth Oscar nomination
Structurally, it’s similar to both My Week With Marilyn and Stan & Ollie, in that all three take a famous American star and revisit an often short period when Britain played a small but important role in their lives.
With My Week With Marilyn, it was Marilyn Monroe’s troubled time here as she filmed The Prince And The Showgirl with Laurence Olivier. With Stan & Ollie – a film that Judy resembles very strongly indeed – it was a final theatre tour of Britain the comedy duo embarked on in a doomed attempt to revive their film careers.
And with Judy it’s a troubled cabaret season at London’s Talk Of The Town, which Garland took on in a desperate attempt to restore her wretched finances. Barely six months later she would be dead.
Rupert Goold’s film is centred on Judy Garland’s troubled cabaret season in London shortly before her death. Above: Zellweger with Finn Wittrock as Garland’s 5th husband, Mickey Deans
Zellweger, who’s a good match for Garland in so many ways (age, size and apparent fragility), gives it everything she’s got to convince as the deeply troubled singer. She’s twitchy, nervous, wide-eyed – to some extent it’s a masterclass in conveying vulnerability and desperation.
But it’s a little one-note – sometimes rather lacking in light and shade, at others just a little too much. Once or twice I thought I spotted the briefest glimpse of Julie Walters’s great comic creation, Mrs Overall, the tremulous caricature she once dreamt up with Victoria Wood.
But for the most part this is a deeply moving, pathos-packed performance that reminds you how good Zellweger can be.
Goold is best-known as a theatre director and Judy, for all its qualities, isn’t quite cinematic enough. A great Zellweger apart, it’s all just a little small and contrived
The film is adapted from Peter Quilter’s stage play End Of The Rainbow, and directed by Rupert Goold, the British director far better known for his many theatre productions than his, to date, modest film work.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that its theatrical origins are obvious, but it would be fair to describe it as a film that – for all its qualities – isn’t quite cinematic enough. Zellweger apart, it’s all just a little small and contrived.
Garland’s troubled childhood and teenage years are beautifully established, however, through a series of flashbacks to the late Thirties, when she was under contract to MGM, run then by the bullying and intimidating Louis B Mayer (played here with suitable menace and looming physical presence by Richard Cordery).
In scenes that suggest there is nothing new about #MeToo abuse, the young British actress Darci Shaw is terrific as the younger Garland, who, as she makes the transition to womanhood, is told what she can eat (the studio throws a 16th-birthday party for her with a cake they forbid her to eat), is force-fed with Benzedrine diet pills, and is then given sleeping pills when she understandably can’t sleep. Thirty years later it was a similar toxic cocktail that would accidentally claim her life.
Musically, the first half of the film is a subdued affair, as Goold concentrates on establishing Garland’s situation – broke, lonely, vulnerable and, eventually, even deprived of her children.
But he more than makes up for that as the action moves to London, the sequin-clad showgirls kick up their heels, and Garland – after a considerable case of nerves – finally takes to the stage.
Goold slightly overcooks the big emotional climax but Zellweger can certainly belt out a tune, and with Over The Rainbow clearly on its way, we know we’re definitely not in Kansas any more. Or anywhere near a happy ending come to that.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Joker Cert: 15, 2hrs 1min
Rating: 
For one extraordinary moment in Joker, Joaquin Phoenix looks so like the late Heath Ledger that it takes your breath away, as the baton is symbolically passed from one great portrayal of Batman’s arch enemy to another.
Ledger, of course, won a posthumous Oscar for his performance in The Dark Knight in 2009, and no one would surely bet against Phoenix picking up a golden statuette in person next year.
The only difference would be that Phoenix would be accepting the Best Actor Oscar rather than the Best Supporting Actor award, because this is a film that not only invites us to feel sorry for the Joker but places him absolutely centre-stage. Batman, even in the shape of a still-schoolboy Bruce Wayne, barely gets a look-in.
No one would surely bet against Joaquin Phoenix picking up the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Batman’s arch enemy, Joker; his performance is spot-on and a tour de force
Instead, Todd Phillips, hitherto best known for directing the Hangover films, focuses his camera and co-writing responsibilities on Arthur Fleck, a lonely man in early middle age who still lives with his mother, scrapes a white-faced living as a not-very-funny clown and nurses deluded dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian.
The fact that he has a mental illness that causes him to laugh maniacally at the most inappropriate moments is going to do nothing to help that ambition or lessen his mounting sense of social isolation.
He has been in and out of institutions from an early age, and we soon get the firm impression that a tough Gotham City is not going to accommodate someone as odd as Arthur. Unless, of course, something snaps inside his head – or he comes off his medication.
With Robert De Niro leading the supporting cast, comparisons with the films of Martin Scorsese are inevitable with both Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy coming to mind
Phoenix, an actor capable of overcooking a performance, gets it spot-on, delivering a tour de force. Yes, he’s eventually overindulged a little and, yes, the film is probably ten minutes too long. It’s also noticeably short on action, although be warned, when it does come it’s as nasty as anything in The Dark Knight.
With Robert De Niro leading the supporting cast as Arthur’s favourite chat-show host, comparisons with the films of Martin Scorsese are inevitable. Both Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy come to mind in a film that is beautifully made but empathises so wholeheartedly with the loner who eventually picks up a gun – so often a real-life nightmare in modern-day America – that it’s possible to be both very impressed and deeply disturbed at the same time.