MOVIE REVIEW: Song Sung Blue
Images courtesy of Focus Features
SONG SUNG BLUE— 4 STARS
It’s been enough years since the 20th century, when a select few musical acts have reached universal audience acceptance. There’s an easy test one can do to check for names that qualify, and it’s an adorable line dropped in Song Sung Blue. Start your sentence with “Besides, who doesn’t like…” and fill in the blank with your favorite choice.
LESSON #1: CONFIRMING LEGENDARY STATUS— Saying it just like that is key. The use of “besides” punches the frankness, and taking the angle of “who doesn’t like” over the more cursory “do you like” creates a leading question that immediately assumes blanket approval already exists. Now, who someone puts to fill in the blank and complete the sentence unlocks people. If the name chosen leads to an enthusiastic, high-fiving agreement, you’ve reached the achievement of “Did we just become best friends?” from Step Brothers. If pushback, doubt, or, worse, non-recognition is given in return, then the shocked gasps are going to come out, and you’re going to have a problem.
In the case of Song Sung Blue, the name finishing the testing question is Neil Diamond, the 84-year-old, New York-born singer-songwriter and toast of athletic venues everywhere, who enjoyed a 50-year career selling over 130 million records and winning a multitude of awards and honors before his recent retirement from touring.
Go ahead and take a moment. What is your response to the Neil Diamond namedrop? Did your eyes sparkle or roll? This reply will unlock both people around you and director Craig Brewer’s new Christmas release and awards contender starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
Anyone who’s been to the movies over the past quarter-century, partaking in the high-profile parade of music biopics, knows there is a narratively repetitive template for this type of film. However, Song Sung Blue scales that formulaic journey down in a very unique way. We’re not watching a dramatic license spent on the life of the actual Neil Diamond. Instead, we’re watching the life, times, highs, and lows of a Neil Diamond tribute band. With pure serendipity, it’s the best of both worlds. Diamond’s catalog gets shown off by big-time voices, and viewers get to engross themselves in a story detached from familiar and indulgent fame.
Song Sung Blue begins in the late 1980s when long-locked musician and reformed alcoholic Mike Sardina (Jackman) would meet the woman who would become the love of his life and musical partner, Claire Stingl (Hudson), on Wisconsin’s summer carnival circuit, where she dazzled attendees as Patsy Cline. Inspired to create their own act and break away from the local troupe of fellow impersonators (including Michael Imperioli as Buddy Holly and Mustafa Shakir as James Brown), the quickly smitten duo find they share a love for Neil Diamond, an idol Mike holds in too high regard to ever impersonate.
LESSON #2: THE TYPE OF PERFORMER TO BECOME AN IMPERSONATOR— As seen in Song Sung Blue, it takes a special performer to be a cover artist, impersonator, or member of a tribute band. It’s a borrowed ladder where an artist is giving up a portion of their individuality and desire for personal successes achieved by harnessing the guise and nostalgia of someone else. Who would make that sacrificial trade of pride and chase those types of gigs as a means to get by and provide for yourself and your family? The answer is someone who labels themselves as an “entertainer,” as Mike Sardina does. Refining a chameleon-like equivalent of looks and sounds is coupled with possessing unconditional fandom for the subject and their material.
Merging their talent as “Lightning and Thunder” with new attire (stellar costume work by Ernesto Martinez) and fresh zest, Mike and Claire seek to craft a “Neil Diamond Experience.” They see themselves as “interpreters” and want people to get the same feeling they get with Diamond’s music. By looking the part and matching the spirit of the music, Song Sung Blue follows their success on and off stage as the two grow in popularity and co-parent their mutual daughters (Henry Danger TV star Ella Anderson and recording artist King Princess, respectively) from previous marriages as a blended, all-hands-on-deck family.
Hugh Jackman, showing off his guitar-plucking talent onscreen with his well-known golden pipes, is eminently qualified for a movie like Song Sung Blue. His musical theater roots made him a cinch to be the consummate frontman for this jukebox musical. The more impressive revelation is Kate Hudson, bringing her lifelong piano skills and singing voice back to the big screen alongside her best attempt at a Wisconsin squawk. There is zero fake-it-til-you-make-it cheating or shortcuts with these two, and their combined charisma is dynamite.
Where that appeal elevates is when Song Song Blue swerves to a dramatic stretch in which Lightning and Thunder are shelved for an extended period of time. Hefty events turn matters serious and reflective. When they do, and the flashy hair and makeup work fades, Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman are undaunted and squeeze more than a little resilience out of their lead characters as their vitality and livelihoods are challenged. Hudson is particularly excellent during this second-act struggle.
Not knowing the Sardina family story, being adapted by Brewer from a 2008 documentary of the same name directed by Greg Kohs, upfront, most folks walking into Song Sung Blue are coming for the music, and you can’t blame them. Idolic worship of Neil Diamond is not a requirement for this movie, but, boy, it sure helps the soaring joyfulness that radiates from the peaks of Song Sung Blue. Even if all you know is “Sweet Caroline” because you heard it at some sporting event, you get that required showstopper attached to a success montage in the movie edited by Craig Brewer’s frequent collaborator Billy Fox (Hustle & Flow) that takes the party feel to a feverish level.
LESSON #3: GAINING CROSS-GENERATIONAL RESPECT— As witnessed when Lightning and Thunder got the rub of a lifetime opening for Pearl Jam, cross-generational respect is a tremendous component in cementing legendary status. When an up-and-coming artist embraces an established one, or, in this case of all things a regional tribute band of the older act, it’s like a vouch for history and leads to fan unification, past and present. The originals get to share something they love, and affectionate new crowds raise the existing reverence. Song Sung Blue extends that legacy-building effect not only for Neil Diamond, Hugh Jackman, and Kate Hudson, but it also graciously gilds one of the most unlikely—and deserving—proxies possible. If this concert movie had a merch table, folks would come out of this buying more Lightning and Thunder shirts than Neil Diamond ones, and that’s a heck of a special result.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1361)
