“Neil Diamond sucks!” yells a patron at the biker bar where Lightning and Thunder, a Neil Diamond cover band, has been rashly booked for its first gig. (The expected motor-home convention has not materialized.) Yet even if you endorse the sentiment, you are bound to be won over by “Song Sung Blue,” a small-scaled, bighearted tale of a real-life Milwaukee duo who absorbed the hardest of life’s knocks and refused to stay down.
Based on Greg Kohs’s 2008 documentary of the same name, the movie dramatizes the remarkable lives of Mike and Claire Sardina (Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson), middle-aged dreamers lugging plenty of baggage. When they meet in the 1980s at the Wisconsin State Fair, Mike is a Vietnam veteran and occasional mechanic with a strong voice and a weak heart. He also boasts 20 years of sobriety and a regular gig impersonating nostalgic musical acts. Claire, for her part, is a harried single mother and hairdresser who performs as Patsy Cline on the side. Both are struggling, divorced parents and desperate to become full-time entertainers. They are clearly made for each other.
Cobbling together a booker (Jim Belushi) and a backup band — including a Buddy Holly impersonator (Michael Imperioli) on guitar and keyboards — Lightning and Thunder is off to prove that Neil Diamond most definitely does not suck. Assisted by a truckload of glitter and a repurposed leaf-blower (Mike’s carefully styled hairdo won’t waft seductively backward by itself), the act grows a respectable following on a Midwestern circuit of casinos, bars and karaoke venues. Then Eddie Vedder calls; he wants them to open for Pearl Jam.
This is only one of the gobsmacking ups and downs that characterize this warm, affecting movie. Its writer and director, Craig Brewer, has a fondness for unlikely dreamers: His most notable success was two decades ago with “Hustle & Flow,” a winning tale of a pimp who longs to become a rapper, and it’s not surprising that he would be drawn to yet another story of musical yearning. When tragedy strikes and darkness descends, the movie — and the audience — is briefly destabilized. Not the cast, though; and while Jackman is terrific as an over-the-hill striver with an almost pathological yen for the spotlight, it’s Hudson who will knock you sideways. I can’t recall ever seeing her perform at this level, and she and Jackman have a rapport that’s genuinely touching. Alongside them, Ella Anderson’s grounded, nuanced turn as Claire’s daughter adds surprising depth to a role that could have played as just another alienated teenager.
A rise-fall-renew journey whose beats are predictable, but whose details are anything but, “Song Sung Blue” unspools in grimy-glam visuals (by Brewer’s frequent collaborator Amy Vincent) and irrepressible tunes. Mike’s determination to reach beyond the crowd-pleasing familiarity of “Sweet Caroline” opens up the soundtrack in unexpected ways. You don’t need to be a Boomer — or Eddie Vedder — to appreciate the slow, sweet swell of “Play Me.”
In Mike and Claire’s quest to become “interpreters” of Diamond’s music, “Song Sung Blue” taps into something ineffable in our connection to it. The couple’s earnestness sounds mockable, but it’s not: They are too sincere, too joyful and too grateful to be doing the only thing that either of them ever wanted to do. And right now all I want to do is dust off my vinyl copy of “Hot August Night.”
Song Sung Blue Rated PG-13 for a sexy intro, a pill-popping bridge and a four-hanky finale. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes. In theaters.
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