Song Sung Blue

Some films are housecats, seemingly uninterested in how you feel about them, and if you find middle ground, well, that’s nice, but they don’t care. But some movies are dogs, shaggy and slobbery, wagging their tail at you and bumping you with their wet nose until you finally break down and show them some love. Song Sung Blue is a dog (not that kind), and it demands to be pet.

Based on the true story of Neil Diamond “interpreters” Mike Sardina and Claire Stengl, who became a Milwaukee phenomenon as the musical duo Lightning and Thunder, Craig Brewer’s biopic takes what could have been a dark tale — he’s a Vietnam veteran and recovering alcoholic, she loses part of her leg to a car accident — and spins it into an aggressively feel-good story of lovers finding each other, of people chasing a dream, and more than anything else, of the insurmountable catchiness of the Diamond catalog.

Brewer’s screenplay is often indefensibly hokey, and the less you know about the real story of Mike and Claire, the more you’ll forgive the script’s melodramatic excesses and tweaking of history. Still, the results are winsome and winning. Trying not to be forgiving of Song Sung Blue is like trying not to sing the “bomp-bomp-bomp” in the chorus of “Sweet Caroline.”

We’re meant to understand, incidentally, that Mike (Hugh Jackman) is serious about paying tribute to Neil Diamond by his refusal to open the show with that song, choosing instead to warm up the crowd with the lesser-known “Soolaimon,” from the singer’s relatively experimental 1970 album Tap Root Manuscript. But Mike has already proven himself to be serious about music, dropping out of a county-fair tribute-acts show rather than imitate Don Ho as a non-Hawaiian. It’s at that show where he meets Claire (Kate Hudson), a Patsy Cline impersonator, and the two of them very quickly find themselves on the same page professionally and romantically.

Part of what makes Song Sung Blue unique among show-biz biopics is that it isn’t about the duo’s climb to stardom, a climb they never really try to make. Brewer is far more interested in the dynamics of their blended family (King Princess plays Mike’s daughter from a previous marriage, while Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley play Claire’s kids) and how their bonds to each other (and to sobriety) get them through both triumphs and tragedy.

Kate Hudson has had, in the quarter-century since Almost Famous, few roles that do justice to her strengths as a singer and actress (she’s the one highlight of Nine), but she inhabits Claire to a degree that makes you believe the character’s choices and impulses in a way that other performers couldn’t have managed. The three younger performers give a lived-in quality to their characters over the passage of the years — as do Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens, and Jim Belushi as figures within Lightning and Thunder’s orbit — but Jackman performs a performance rather than sinking into a character. (He can certainly belt out “Forever in Blue Jeans” with the best of them, though.)

It’s a story that plays to Brewer’s strengths, from the unglamorous but never condescending view of the Midwest he brought to his Footloose remake to the loving celebration of dreamers on the margins of show business from Dolemite Is My Name. The director’s regular cinematographer Amy Vincent can go full-gloss for a dream sequence or harrowingly naturalistic for an intensely-filmed auto accident, and production designer Clay A. Griffith (Greenland) has an eye for the details of performance venues that range from a Thai restaurant to the auditorium where Lightning and Thunder open for Pearl Jam (which really happened).

Brewer’s also pays more attention than most to the process of making music. Many films will start with one guy playing an acoustic guitar, and by the end of his song, there’s an invisible orchestra swelling offstage somewhere. With these performers, if there’s a horn section or backup singers, we know how they got there and who’s paying them (or, in some cases, why they’re showing up as a favor).

Is Song Sung Blue shamelessly manipulative in its assault on audiences’ tear ducts and heart strings? Absolutely. Will those qualities make it a whipping boy for contemporary reviews like this one while also turning it into a beloved classic in years to come? It’s entirely possible. Like those Neil Diamond songs, this movie might have a moment where it’s considered a joke or an embarrassment, but eventually, people will come clean about how much they love it.

Director: Craig Brewer
Screenwriter: Craig Brewer, based on the documentary by Greg Kohs
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperioli, Ella Anderson, King Princess, Mustafa Shakir, Hudson Hensley, John Beckwith, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi
Producers: John Davis, John Fox, Craig Brewer
Executive producers: Erika Hampson, Greg Kohs
Director of photography: Amy Vincent
Production design: Clay A. Griffith
Editing: Billy Fox
Music: Scott Bomar
Sound design: Jacob Ribicoff, supervising sound editor
Production companies: Focus Features, Davis Entertainment Company
In English
133 minutes