In recent years, viewers have been treated to a consistent wave of music biopics, including films like Elvis or A Complete Unknown or just this year’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, all of which have added to the pile of an increasingly familiar subgenre as saturated with generic beats and tropes as stuff like slashers and superhero fare. So it’s immediately novel that Craig Brewer’s Song Sung Blue isn’t one of said biopics… sort of. Based on a documentary of the same name, the film follows the career of Milwaukee-based duo Lightning and Thunder (real names Mike and Claire Sardina, here played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, respectively), who shot to regional fame as a popular Neil Diamond tribute act.
When we first meet Mike and Claire, he’s a frustrated musician and recovering alcoholic tired of being a Buddy Holly impersonator and singing Don Ho standards at the fair. He knows he’s not destined for stardom, but he feels a deep calling to entertain people. When he meets Claire, who has her own Patsy Cline act, there’s immediate chemistry and also a shared sense of purpose. This early part of the movie is probably the most atypical for a music biopic, but it speaks to Brewer’s longtime interest in the simple everyday difficulties his characters face. Paying the bills, family obligations, booking gigs: it’s a grind made worth it by the thrill of artistic fulfillment.
Shortly after Lightning and Thunder become a sudden local sensation (thanks to Pearl Jam), in a twist right out of, well, a bad movie, Claire is unexpectedly hit by a car while gardening in her front yard, causing her to lose a leg. Yes, this actually happened to Claire (in fact, it almost happened twice). The rest of the film then proceeds as a pretty brisk chronicle of the trials and tribulations the couple faced: mental health issues, Mike’s heart condition, growing success. Through it all, Jackman and Hudson are unsurprisingly fantastic, with the latter especially having to contrast Claire’s sincere affection and talent with crippling depression. And, of course, there are a lot of great songs. But all this incident and sentiment, at least structurally, means that Song Sung Blue really begins to resemble a more formulaic Neil Diamond jukebox musical, the kind of film its initial stretch resists.
But Brewer thankfully continues to make unusual choices. A second car accident plays almost like a fever dream; there’s a bizarre section in which Mike’s daughter has to defibrillate him; and the final jerking of tears is yet again precisely on the nose yet pretty much true to life. The director’s game here is making an outsized movie star musical about two mostly ordinary folks, using the formula as a vector for his own interests, focusing on characters who would never get this sort of treatment otherwise. So while Song Sung Blue might still hit a lot of the expected melodramatic notes, the distinct weirdness of the true story and Brewer’s genuine empathy for these human beings make this project a richer than anticipated experience.
DIRECTOR: Craig Brewer; CAST: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Ella Anderson, King Princess; DISTRIBUTOR: Focus Features; IN THEATERS: December 25; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 13 min.
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