After a long year of seriousness and existential dread, we have arrived at the time where I gorge on escapism. Football season is in full swing, and the fall movies are starting to premiere. My college team had a bye week, so I convinced my daughter to go with me to see a movie I didn’t know existed a couple of weeks ago. Somewhere in the last four or five days, I discovered I absolutely needed to see Judy, the bio-pic about Judy Garland. We had no idea what to expect, having barely even seen ads for it. It was nothing like I imagined from seeing the trailer once online. It had more quiet moments than I would have thought for a movie about a famous singer. We enjoyed the heck out of it, but as soon as it was over, my daughter asked, “Does Hollywood just chew people up and spit them out?” It sure seems like it. Despite feeling like crying at the end of it, I really liked it.
It wasn’t playing at our local theater. We had a choice of seeing it in Boulder or Westminster. We went to the theater where we thought it was playing, and lucky for us, we got there really early. Half an hour before showtime, we tried to buy tickets, only to learn we were at the wrong theater. We had to get back on the highway, and drive two more exits closer to Denver. We sat at a complete standstill for several minutes ahead of the place where the highway had collapsed into a sinkhole this summer. We managed to make it to the other, bigger theater megaplex just in time, but we had no choice but to sit in the very front row. Even with seats that recline, it was hard to view the screen. Everything was super distorted, which was distracting. It was hard for me to play my favorite game (“Who’s that actor? Where do I know her from?”)
Someday this will be on HBO, and I can see it straight on. I’ll watch it again just for the chance to see everyone’s heads the correct size and shape in relation to their bodies. I may also view it differently knowing she was only 47 at the time the Renee Zellweger scenes were set. She played her like she was a much older woman. It actually felt like a body blow to learn her age.
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