🦁🦁🦁: Renée Zellweger was a phenom and continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, my God. It felt like I was watching archival footage. The makeup and costuming departments deserve their chips! 🏆🏆

🐯🐯🐯: Not as flamboyant of a production that I was expecting.  The screenplay lacked depth and nuance in moments. Zellweger really carried a few of the lackluster scenes because she really did look like Mama Garland, an uncanny resemblance.

🐻🐻🐻: The flashbacks were informative-ish, but not entirely effective in adding noteworthy information to the present-day scenes. I could’ve done without them. It cheapened the experience and drained the momentum, especially in the introduction.

😮😮😮 (oh my!): There was a driving scene set during the nighttime. Zellweger is focused in the backseat.  The car is presumably accelerating forward, but the lights glaring through the window showed stillness. That was an early, low-qual, noticeable editing/production design flaw.

🦁🦁🦁: Wish there was one supporting character whose performance was strong enough to remember. In most moments the supporting cast felt like they were only present to make sneaky eyes at each other at Garland’s expense.

🐯🐯🐯: The music wasn’t memorable. The score (what score), wasn’t present… in a film about an iconic performer… This adaptation shot down my expectations for a grand theatrical snapshot of the later moments of Frances Ethel Gumm’s tumultuous life.

🐻🐻🐻: Lady Mormont (Bella Ramsey) returns! (ha ha…bears) Also, I’m have strong aversion for PG-13 biopics—it’s like diluting stories to sell a fantasy of someone’s real life. And obviously this position can be taken the other way too—like a director having free rein with a rated R or NC-17 biopic and fabricating stories to sell a warped narrative about a public figure. Like, I don’t mind taking creative liberties in adaptations. That’s part of what art is. And I’m not saying all biopics need to be like Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” or Lee’s “Malcolm X,” and conversely I’m not saying that all biopics need to be avant-garde and fantastical like Fletcher’s “Rocketman.” But recently the idea of the autobiography-to-film, or stage play-to-film game seem less serious and more willing to protecting legacies. SHOW ME REAL OR LEAVE ME ALONE! …I kid, but still.

😮😮😮: The conclusion saved this for me. I became restless and hit the watch-check right up until the last big performance. I ground my teeth at the predictability of the screenplay using “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as a grand closing to this film, but it was fantastically done. Zellweger shined the most in that moment and convinced me that she portrayed the late icon with grace.