Song Sung Blue

A down on their luck married couple find a new life together as a Neil Diamond tribute band, navigating their personal struggles in the pursuit of their dreams.

There’s two types of movie genres I generally avoid.

One, I’ve had my fill of scrappy sports teams pulling together to make it to the championship. I’m just tired of them. I’m not interested. Especially when it’s told in a super dramatic way. And two, Music Biopics. The most reliably melodramatic, anti-climatic, and ham-handed of all movie genres—one that often lacks an actual ending, usually because life just doesn’t work that way, or maybe because the film’s subject is still alive so the story isn’t technically over—it’s perhaps my most hated of movie genres, with the exception of the Weird Al Yankovic movie, of course, and also Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which even if that film wasn’t hilarious, I would love it simply for the fact that it was made solely because the Johnny Cash biopic was so dumb and so bad that the filmmakers wanted to give it the classic Johnny Cash middle finger.

So, mad respect there…

Anyway, the main draw of the Music Biopics seems to be the chance to see one famous person doing their very best imitation of another famous person, usually in the kind of blatantly cherry-picked Icarian tale that Awards Season just love, and all with the added bonus of it being set to the beat of a bunch of tunes that we all know and love, or at least, recognize. It's just so dull. I know stories are inherently deliberately manipulative, the whole point is to create an emotional reaction, but there's difference between being deliberately manipulative and being DELIBERATELY manipulative.

Music biopics are always the latter way too much.

So naturally—mostly because I wasn’t really paying attention—I assumed that Song Sung Blue was going to be yet another of the recent glut of craptastic music biopics being inflicted on us, but instead, written, produced, and directed by Craig Brewer, it's based on “the true love story” (and also the 2008 documentary film of the same name by Greg Kohs) of a Neil Diamond tribute band from Wisconsin known as Lightning & Thunder.

So…

In 1987, alcoholic musician Mike Sardina has been hired to be a Don Ho impersonator in a show of impersonators at the Wisconsin State Fair. But after getting fired from the show for refusing to perform as Don Ho, because he wanted to do his own material, performing as his own alter ego, Lightning, he sees Claire Stengl perform. A hairdresser by day and a performer by night, Claire was hired that night to be Patsy Cline. But before she went on, she had seen Mike get fired, and she had suggested to him that he go "the Neil Diamond route” instead.

Mike watches her sing, and he is immediately smitten.

She is the Lena to his Ole.

The two begin a romantic relationship as they decide to become a Neil diamond tribute band, and perform together as Lightning and Thunder. But from the start, Mike obstinately refuses to sing Sweet Caroline, claiming that Neil Diamond has many other songs that are all much better, which is true.

After a miscommunication about the kind of bar they will be playing their first gig in ends in a brawl, because Mike deservedly decks a biker who says Neil Diamond sucks, Claire consoles Mike in the parking lot. He admits that he is upset about the failure of their debut because he had envisioned this night as being a perfect night, and it wasn’t. Claire is confused as to why he is so upset about this.

Then Mike asks her to marry him.

She agrees, but only if Mike agrees to open their shows with Sweet Caroline from then on. Mike relents. The pair marry and their families merge, Mike’s "Florida Goth" daughter from a previous marriage, and Claire’s "future Wisconsin VFW bartendar" daughter, and her young son from a previous marriage. They then lead their little band in a string of very successful local shows, culminating in getting to open for Pearl Jam in 1995.

Then, in 1999, tragedy strikes, as it is wont to do.

Claire is hit by a car while planting flowers in front of their house and ends up losing her left leg below the knee. Because of this, Mike‘s “bad ticker” gives him an stress-induced heart attack. They both survive, but in aftermath, Claire struggles with depression, recurring pain, and an addiction to pain medications. They fight constantly. With the band in shambles, and with singing having lost its luster for Mike without Claire up there with him, he struggles with his sobriety. Eventually, Claire has a mental breakdown and is found wandering outside, so Mike is forced to put her in a mental hospital.

With Claire in the hospital and Mike working crappy jobs to make ends meet, Claire’s daughter tells Mike that she is four months pregnant and wants to give the baby up for adoptions. Rachel tells Mike that she needs her mom, and this leads to Claire having a breakthrough and gradually getting her shit back together, which includes learning to walk again with a prosthetic, and also...

Getting the band back together.

Lightning and Thunder are playing again, and to even greater heights. Eventually, the Ritz in Milwaukee invites them to headline a show on the same night that Neil Diamond himself is playing a sold-out show nearby. Their show sells out with so much local press, Even Neil Diamond wants to meet them.

The concert is a massive success.

But afterwards, while they are on the way to meet Neil Diamond, well… Mike has that previously mentioned bad ticker, so… y’know...

There’s not really much to say about this film.

Song Sung Blue is the definition of heavy-handed and obvious. It’s silly. It's a silly “real-life” comedic drama, but it isn’t embarrassed by its subject matter. It’s heavy on the accents. It’s heavy on the melodrama. But it’s also very heavy on the charm. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson have an undeniable chemistry here. They’re great together in this sweet, surprisingly pretty entertaining little story, playing a pair of “normal” people high on a life lived upon their small stage, who then have real life very literally crash into them.

It's still basically a music biopic, but also not really, so I think it can be forgiven for its melodramic excesses. Still, much like actual music biopics, it follows a lot of the same narrative formula, with its “real life” plot points clearly heavily truncated and cherry-picked, not to mention played big and broad and with all the subtlety of a sledge hammer to the forehead. In the end, the film lands somewhere between the classic music biopic and their ridiculous parodies. It’s just a silly little story about a couple of talented people who only ever wanted to play the kinds of hits that folks in bars and Thai restaurants love to drunkenly sway along with, while occasionally shouting out the chorus.

Honestly, you're not going to see a more bizarrely entertaining film that still has some of the worst dialogue you've ever heard than Song Sung Blue. It’s definitely not a “good” movie, but it will win you over.

I mean, like the film says… who doesn’t like Neil Diamond?

Also, now that the Oscars are over, I bet Claire Stengl was watching the broadcast from a Wisconsin bar, and when Kate Hudson didn't win Best Actress, she went: "oh... shoot! Shoot, you guys!"