Delayed Reaction: A Star Is Born

Premise: A famous older man helps make a younger woman into a star. They fall in love despite his personal demons. It ends poorly.

I'm not sure why there are so many versions of this specific story out there. I'm seeing them in a weird order. I think I did see the original first, followed by the 2018 version. Now I'm at the universally revered one. And, I'm in no hurry to get to the Barbara Streisand version for a lot of reasons.

The Judy Garland one is the classic, and it mostly has to do with Judy Garland. I'm no Judy scholar, but this is her apex. The Wizard of Oz is her most famous role, but A Star is Born, appropriately, is her star role. She gets to sing and dance and act, all as big as she wants. James Mason is good too. I'm not seeing the movie for him though. It doesn't matter how many times or in how many versions I see it, that "I just wanted to take another look at you" line is so damn perfect. It's the kind of brief exchange like "I love you." "I know." that sells an audience on an entire romance. A 2h34m cut of the movie would've seemed long. The 176-minute extended cut on HBO Max was excessive. I wish I knew it was an extended cut going in too, because I was very confused by some of the dialoged-only scene with the still shots. The movie has that thing where I can feel that the movie is too long without ever being able to put my finger on which parts needed to be cut. It's more like every scene could be 25% shorter. Still, I'm glad that I finally saw it.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend