For the first half this is just a pretty good TV bio-pic, not very subtly hitting the high and low points of Garland's life and career. But then Judy Davis takes over the role and gives an amazing if sometimes over the top performance that galvanizes your attention. She manages to make Judy both a selfish monster and a heartbreaking victim of the system that created her, often both at the same time.
Victor Garber nicely underplays to balance out Davis as Luft, Judy's third husband.
(mild spoiler ahead)
However, the film is dragged down by awful voice overs lifted from Lorna Luft's book about her mother (upon which this is based), the worst and most disastrous at the very end, when, in spite of everything the film has shown us, we're preached to that Judy's life wasn't a tragedy, that she knew the show must go on, and that she was an eternal optimist. This does nothing except pull out the emotional rug from what we just watched which was, by very definition a tragedy; a woman of immense talents hooked on drugs as a young girl by those around her to keep her going, and then slowly being chewed up and spit out by the entertainment industry.
Victor Garber nicely underplays to balance out Davis as Luft, Judy's third husband.
(mild spoiler ahead)
However, the film is dragged down by awful voice overs lifted from Lorna Luft's book about her mother (upon which this is based), the worst and most disastrous at the very end, when, in spite of everything the film has shown us, we're preached to that Judy's life wasn't a tragedy, that she knew the show must go on, and that she was an eternal optimist. This does nothing except pull out the emotional rug from what we just watched which was, by very definition a tragedy; a woman of immense talents hooked on drugs as a young girl by those around her to keep her going, and then slowly being chewed up and spit out by the entertainment industry.