You don’t have to be into Neil Diamond to be into “Song Sung Blue” (2025), the quintessential American movie with high highs and low lows. Adapting a 2008 documentary with the same name, Hugh Jackman stars as Mike Sardina, stage name Lightning, an alcoholic who got addicted to music. When he meets Claire Stingl (Kate Hudson), a hairdresser and single mother with two kids, she is dressed as Patsy Cline ready to hit the stage. The two fall in love brainstorming about forming a Neil Diamond tribute band called Lightning and Thunder, but almost insurmountable obstacles threaten their dreams. Can these two crazy kids make it? If it was not based on a true story, no one would believe it as fiction. For once, I did not feel like immediately watching the documentary after the film.
Every once in awhile, Jackman gets to be true to himself and sing. I still have not seen “The Greatest Showman” (2017), but anyone would have to be under a rock to not know that he is really a song and dance man, not Wolverine. By laying on the period details thick, the movie magic peeps do their best to make him seem like a regular guy, but he is still busting out of his shirts and as broad as a barn as ever. Watch Jackman in 2000 in his first appearance as Wolverine, and he was not so muscular, writer & director. Without seeing the documentary, it is easy to imagine him as Mike because Jackman’s love for the stage is infectious and evident in “Song Sung Blue.” He really starts working that acting muscle in the scenes where he falls in love with Claire. Jackman did a stint as a rom com staple in his salad days, and if more rom coms were like director and cowriter Craig Brewer’s film, I’d watch them more.
While singing, Hudson and Jackman capture the magic of when two people love the same thing, which makes it easier to fall in love with the other person because their characters become more themselves with each other than anyone else. While I prefer Hudson playing wealthy horrible women in “Glass Onion” (2022) and “Shell” (2024), she takes a break, disappears into this role and manages to steal the spotlight from Jackman, which is usually impossible to do. Don’t forget that she did a handful of “Glee” episodes. Claire’s story arc is so unexpected that you should forgive yourself if you are uncertain if she is dreaming, or everything is really happening. The oneiric sequences are realistic enough to be plausible, and the waking scenes are surreal enough that it will permanently jolt moviegoers out of thinking it is just another cheesy, make it big film and expect anything could happen because it does. Just when you accept a moment as a fact, something else wildly audacious happens that only could happen in the US.
If you are not American and have not spent time in the US, you may think that “Song Sung Blue” is not realistic, but it is. The first hour follows all the expected beats of musicians trying to make it then the rest of the film makes them pay for it. Brewer’s film is like a wholesome Sean Baker film where you do not have to worry about bringing your parents, but no punches were pulled, and the hits keep coming. The most powerful theme is getting a second chance during the fall and winter of life at the height of your inner life, but at the nadir of your physical and material life. After the lights came up, critics regaled each other with stories about how they directly knew someone who went through something similar. All of it! While everyone carries their bags of rocks differently, “Song Sung Blue” states what is happening in case there are any doubts though the depictions are clear and recognizable. Unlike “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” (2025), audience members will not need any clues as to what they were supposed to take away from the film.
At times, “Song Sung Blue” misses a step when it tells instead of shows tribulations. For instance, there is a thread about Mike not attending AA meetings, and later Claire casually mentions ridiculing Mike about needing to talk to strangers. Brewer only allows them one moment of ugliness and a couple of butting heads scenes, but otherwise it is a love fest, and I’ll sign a waiver. Why? It gets more right than wrong with the supporting characters’ relationship with the main characters and how those relationships reflect the main characters’ love story. One of the conflicts shows Mike understandably reluctant to open up because of Claire’s earlier moment of crisis when she acted poorly. It is real.
Claire’s daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson), goes from sullen teen who thinks that Mike is weird to being a sister to his daughter (King Princess in her feature debut) then not only coming around on Mike, but sharing a special bond with him. It is one of the few movies that shows how parentification is wrong, but it is also clear that it is from circumstances and need to survive, not from parental neglect. So abusive effect, not abusive intent, which is hard to balance, but Brewer does. More importantly, it does not feel heavy handed while also being obvious.
There are a lot of great moments. Another waiver signed: there are so many characters and not all of them get named. Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Nineties, there is a casual, harmonious multiculturalism to the community, but it can feel as if they exist to support the family, which is an endemic problem in films when the characters do not feel realized. Maybe I’m getting soft, but as “Song Sung Blue” unfolded, the performances were so good that I did not feel that way. The trope of the presumably gay couple who are good with hair and wardrobe, Johnny (Jim Conroy) and Babs (Darius Rose), barely had names, but Johnny’s last scene of joy and pride was not just about being happy for the couple, but proud of their work. Somechai (Shyaporn Theerakulstit) mostly sings with Mike and speaks in another language, but he has an amazing singing voice and even without the backstory, his mournful karaoke duets with Mike feels like another informal support group between two men who love the women in their lives deeply and ache at the loss, pending or realized. Mustafa Shakir, who was the best part of “Love Hurts” and managed to do his best with a horrible accent in “Luke Cage,” is back and making an unforgettable impression as a James Brown impersonator, Sex Machine.
“Song Sung Blue” had a handful of critics singing “Sweet Caroline” (bum bum bum) after the credits rolled. It’s so good (so good SO GOOD). It is an entertaining, crowd pleaser, but if you are too cool to get swept away, come back when you get over not being cringe. It was the rare film that accurately depicted the bitterest aspect of existence without evaporating the motivation of survival: joy and love.
