Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Gord Jackson As others have noted, the story itself is certainly not top draw. A soap-operatic mishmash about a driven show biz mom, prim and proper stiff upper lip Brit doc and an illegitimate teenage son into whose life driven mom wants to re insinuate herself, well it's all right out everybody's favourite soap (spoof) As The Stomach Churns. Happily however, the whole enterprise is almost fully redeemed by the brilliant performances of Judy Garland, Dirk Bogarde, Gregory Phillips, Jack Klugman and Aline MacMahon. If you're a Judy Garland fan (and I am) you'll overlook the quill and parchment foolishness and wallow instead in the great songs and near flawless acting.Certainly, as others have also noted, there are threads of Judy Garland's life woven into this uneven tapestry, but one standout reason for watching this film, for those who never got to see Judy live, is to get a sense of the enormous power, indeed charisma the lady projected from the stage. I saw her in person twice with that first show being near the end of her 'Carnegie Hall' tour. With Mort Lindsay conducting thirty or more musicians out came 4' 11" 'Joltin' Judy' for what she once described as "two hours of POW!" Alone!No dancing chorus boys!No backup comedy acts!It wasn't just a concert - it wasn't an event - it was a HAPPENING - exactly as the concert sequences in this film imply. It's a shame other characters in the story weren't more fully fleshed out, and certainly it is highly regrettable that Judy Garland was such an underrated actress. It is equally shameful that she didn't cop an Oscar nomination for her performance or indeed that I COULD GO ON SINGING was her cinematic swan song. But we do have what she left us in movies, her television series and her glorious recordings, most especially those great Capitol Records titles like MISS SHOW BUSINESS, JUDY, ALONE, JUDY IN LOVE, THE LETTER, JUDY! THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT and of course JUDY GARLAND AT CARNEGIE HALL. Under brilliant producer Voyle Gilmor she got to work with the best musicians and orchestrater's in the business, people who knew exactly how to showcase her unique vocal talents, names like Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, Jack Marshall and the aforementioned Mort Lindsay among others. Indeed, it is why, along with film titles like A STAR IS BORN and I COULD GO ON SINGING that I unhesitatingly say Judy Garland will always GO ON SINGING!!

Scott Amundsen Critical opinion of I COULD GO ON SINGING seems to be a consensus that it represents a sad finale to her career, but I do not see it that way at all. Because while the plot is old hat and could have been lifted right out of a cheap soap opera, the considerable talents of the cast, with Garland still in peak form leading the way, make this film greater than the sum of its parts.Garland is Jenny Bowman, a singer whose career has always come first. Fifteen years previously, she had an affair with then-medical-student and now successful doctor David Donne (Dirk Bogarde), an affair which produced a son. Jenny, forced perhaps into a choice (it isn't quite clear in the somewhat muddled script), leaves the boy with his father, who marries another woman with whom he raises the boy, Matt (Gregory Phillips). Matt grows up believing his father's wife to be his mother; again, the reason for all these lies seems unclear.Anyway, perhaps inevitably, after the death of David's wife, Jenny shows up in London while on a concert tour and proceeds to try to insinuate herself into her son's life. Since the kid, like most upper-middle-class English children were in those days, is in boarding school, it is easier for Jenny to go behind David's back in her quest for the affections of the boy.In the end, the plot is almost negligible, though I do feel that the David character is a bit too much of a bastard for my taste; Jenny is clearly a self-centered woman but she isn't unreasonable or without human feelings. At times David is such a cold fish one wonders what she ever saw in him.No, what matters in the end is Garland's performance. And what a performance it is! Jenny Bowman as written appears to have been based at least loosely on Judy, and she does not spare herself: despite her prodigious talent, this woman is not a hero; she is just an ordinary person in many ways, with an extraordinary talent that sometimes brings out the worst in her.I COULD GO ON SINGING and A STAR IS BORN are probably the only two films Garland ever made in which the lead character was pure Judy. No doubt A STAR IS BORN is the superior film, but this one is hardly the disappointment the critics of the day seemed to think it was, and especially when Garland is onstage, a bit overweight but the voice still intact, the magic is still there and quite irresistible.

michduncg-1 As melodramas of the time go, this is a an entertaining piece. The scenes of London, like those of 'Alfie', are full of an exciting, rebuilt city, about to start to swing. New skyscrapers, helicopters and jet airliners to me add a great excitement to the background of the film.And with a cast like this film had, it cannot fail to entrance you further. But when you realise that this is Judy Garland in her last film role, playing a person who is obviously very similar to her, then it becomes fascinating. I am not a big Judy Garland fan, but I found myself captivated by this film. The addition of Dirk Bogarde and others was the icing on the cake!

Martin Bradley Judy Garland is magnificent playing herself; sorry, playing Jenny Bowman, an American singer of a certain age, in London for a series of concerts at the Palladium. The movie is a mostly mediocre tale of mother love but as a showcase for Garland, both as actress and as a performer, (her scenes at the Palladium were probably as close as the movies ever came to capturing her on-stage persona), is it exhilarating and indelibly moving. By the time she gets around to her drunken 'I can't be spread so thin' speech all traces of the character have been wiped clean and it's Garland, raw and emotional, up there on the screen. She was never to make another film, which is probably just as well. With this you can say she went out on a high.Co-star Dirk Bogarde fights a losing battle, (and he gets some terrible lines to say). He's a prissy, fussy stuffed shirt and you can never believe that he and Garland could ever have been romantically involved. There is also a wonderful turn from that great and perpetually undervalued actress Aline MacMahon as Garland's dresser-cum-secretary-cum-companion. But it's Garland's show. The panavision frame can hardly contain her.