REVIEW

Zellweger Stages a Full-Throated Comeback In ‘JUDY’, A Sturdy Biopic That Doesn’t Quite Find Next Gear

Name: Judy review
Item: Judy
Rating: 3.3
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · September 23, 2019

Zellweger Stages a Full-Throated Comeback In ‘JUDY’, A Sturdy Biopic That Doesn’t Quite Find Next Gear

Where to watch: Streaming on HBO Max, or rent or buy on digital (updated October 2026)Watch on HBO Max · Rent or buy on Amazon · Buy on Blu-ray/4KAs an Amazon Associate, Silver Screen Riot earns from qualifying purchases.

Fame is toxic. Particularly for the young. Ask River Phoenix. Or Lindsay Lohan. Brittany Spears. Macaulay Culkin. We’ve seen the tragedy of adolescent fame, one as old as the concept of fame itself, play out across history time and again. In Judy, the prepubescent bargain for fame opens the film. Flanked by a yellow brick road, a young Judy Garland (played by Darci Shaw) trades her songbird voice and every ounce of independence for the opportunity to be more than “just a mother” or another “office girl”. For the chance to be seen, admired, beloved by a nation. Unknowingly selling her soul to the devil of entertainment and damning herself to a challenging life of self-commodification, Judy is the OG tragedy girl struck down by fame’s cantankerous venom.

Judy, directed by Rupert Goold (True Story), is remarkably unsubtle about the pivotal nature of this exchange and its lasting impact upon Garland’s life and longevity. When we shift to a “present-day” Garland, she is a broken woman; financially, emotionally, and otherwise. Without a home for her children, Judy shuffles from one hotel suite to the next, bankrupting the last bit of goodwill she has left in the city of stars. She’s been lowered to putting on family acts with her two most recent tagalong offspring for a paltry $150 a night. When it becomes clear that she can no longer care for her children after they are ejected from their current temporary domicile, Judy agrees to stage a tumultuous series of shows in London, a last gasp plot to earn some real money, amend her home life, and settle into being that “good mother” that he likes to think of herself as. Judy movie still

The film betrays a deep empathy for the titular character, Goold treating Judy to a warmth so often denied her in her personal and professional life. But that’s not to say that Judy portrays the once-starlet in unblemished fashion. A series of doomed marriages, unpredictable behavior, and a litany of substance abuse issues, all highlight the long-term damage inflicted by Garland’s rigid, abusive childhood and details why she was ultimately ejected from the limelight. She’s unreliable and is prone to cancel or no show last minute, becomes blacklisted by the pictures, and is left uninsurable by virtue of no one really being able to trust her. Her substances of choice are pharmaceuticals and clear spirits and she rarely neglects either, which makes her moments of lucidity all the more tragic. Goold’s film understands the shortcomings of the woman but wraps them in a scathing indictment of Golden Age studio policy.

In Judy, her childhood life is portrayed as a circus of carefully mandated child abuse. Callous handlers, an ogre of a studio head, and no one to play protector leaves a young Judy in a most precarious state. Denied cake and cheeseburgers as much as love and time off, the Wizard of Oz actress is a commodity, her every ounce of self gift-wrapped, price-tagged, and sold to the highest bidder. When Judy can no longer keep up with a demanding schedule that includes frequent 18-hour days, the studio foists substance dependency upon her, micromanaging her sleep cycles, alertness, and energy with the uppers, downers, and barbiturates that would eventually take her life.

▶ Streaming on HBO Max. More picks: The Best Movies on HBO Max Right Now →

Tom Edge’s script, adapted from the stage play “End of the Rainbow” by Peter Quilter, hits a lot of the selfsame biopic notes, but almost always in key. There’s nothing all too flashy here and it follows a rather predictable road but Judy remains entertaining and engaging if rarely remarkable and emotionally sock-knocking. Few of the characters that are not named Judy Garland add all that much texture to the piece, save for the unlikely relationship Judy strikes up with devoted fan Dan (Andy Nyman). This includes her flirtation with Finn Wittrock‘s Mickey Dean, a suitor young enough to be her son, and empathetic handler Rosalyn Wilder (Jessie Buckley). With all the fireworks erupting from Judy, here simply isn’t enough narrative capital invested in these characters to inspire much feeling at all.

Renée Zellweger, on the other hand, sparkles, portraying Garland as an unflagging icon weened on the tit of fame and thirsty for one more taste. Despite self-destructive habits, Garland finds peace (a thing as hard to come by as any for the troubled star) in front of an adoring audience, no matter how single-serving and fleeting that acceptance is. When she’s singing to an audience, she flowers, and Zellweger is extraordinary at dumping buckets of emotion into Garland’s various show tunes. She kills it. Hers is the kind of performance that the Academy trips over itself to nominate. Biopic? Check. Hollywood story? Check. Song and dance? Check. Her performance is rock solid and, more importantly, exactly the type that Hollywood tends to cherish and champion. Zellweger is assured a nomination come this year’s Oscars if only for her soulful rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, which has never sounded so defeated, depressing, and, ultimately, transcendent.

CONCLUSION: Start carving Renée Zellweger’s name into your Oscar nomination lock-list as she owns the role of Judy Garland in Rupert Goold’s competent, if rote, biopic of the tragic starlet in her final moments.