★★½ (2½ out of 4)
Hugh Jackman and especially Kate Hudson sing and act their hearts out in “Song Sung Blue,” a true story about a blue-collar Milwaukee couple who find love after forming a Neil Diamond tribute band that made them local celebs back in the late ’80s and ’90s. It sounds pretty cheesy and sometimes it’s a whole cheese wheel, but writer-director Craig Brewer (“Hustle and Flow,” “Dolemite is My Name”) doesn’t duck the dark places characters go while trying to negotiate an elusive happy ending.
Adapted from Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, “Song Sung Blue” doesn’t mind being uncool. In fact, it revels in it. Jackman plays mechanic Mike Sardina, a Vietnam vet with a bum ticker who plays small-time music gigs between AA meetings (he’s 20 years sober). Hudson is Claire Stengl, a hairdresser who moonlights as a Patsy Cline cover artist (She does a damn fine “Walkin’ After Midnight.”)
Both Claire and Mike are divorced with kids when they meet at a Wisconsin State Fair, where semi-amateurs impersonate the stars they want to be. Michael Imperioli, 59, is the show’s promotor who also does a mean Buddy Holly, who died at 22. Mike is scheduled to do a Don Ho “Tiny Bubbles” number and then, in a moment of dignity preservation, decides to quit. He sticks around to watch Claire, hiding her blonde locks in a dark Patsy wig. The rest is clichéd, meet-cute history, except Jackman and Hudson play it for real, establishing a flirty connection.
You can practically see the thought bubble when they decide to partner up. Mike already calls himself Lightning (on lead vocals and guitar) and Claire can be Thunder (dueting while on keyboards and tambourine). It’s a real bonus that Jackman and Hudson (her Midwest accent is spot-on) sound and feel great together as they rehearse “Play Me,” Diamond’s cornball classic (“You are the sun, I am the moon/You are the words, I am the tune/ Play me”).
Pretty quickly, the locals are eating up what Thunder and Lightning are serving. Everybody thinks Mike is nuts having the act open with Diamond’s arty spiritual “Soolaimon” instead of the chart-topping “Sweet Caroline,” but the Thunder and Lightning train is on the move and good times never seemed so good.
Mike’s dentist (Fisher Stevens) is now the act’s manager, a brash Jim Belushi books them at cheap casinos and out of nowhere they get a call from superstar Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith) who wants them to open for Pearl Jam. That never happened, right? Wrong. It did, and if you want a less Hollywood version of all this, check out the documentary version on YouTube.
The family entanglements come next. Claire’s tween son Dayna (Hudson Hensley) warms quickly to Mike, while teen daughter Rachel (a very fine Ella Anderson) holds back until she meets Mike’s kid Angelina (indie musician King Princess), a fellow pothead, and obstacles are cleared. Setbacks start as they do in life as well as in the movies. Song sung blue, everybody knows one.
It sounds pretty cheesy and sometimes it’s a whole cheese wheel, but Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson sing their hearts out.
Spoiler Alert: Skip this graph if you want to go into the heartbreak stuff knowing nothing. A car veers out of control, speeds into Claire’s backyard and slams into her spine, necessitating amputation below one knee. And Mike’s heart condition, as you might have guessed, worsens in the worst way. OK, spoilers are over, continue reading.)
Bouts of depression dig into Claire. It’s here that Hudson comes through with her best performance since her breakthrough role a quarter century ago in “Almost Famous” put her in the Oscar race. Hudson already has a Golden Globe nomination for “Song Sung Blue,” so if Oscar comes calling again, she definitely deserves the attention. Jackman, with less dramatic material to work with, sometimes pushes too hard with the little he has. But his charm is genuine, his musical instincts unerring and he looks great in Diamond’s signature silk shirts and sequins. He brings down the house with “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.” And, yes, he and Hudson do sing “Sweet Caroline,” despite Mike’s insistence that Diamond is a world-class musician who shouldn’t be reduced to one massive hit.
Diamond, now 84 and suffering the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease, has offered nothing but support for “Song Sung Blue” the movie. Viewed objectively, it’s standard biopic schmaltz sandwiched between musical numbers that Jackman and Hudson sell with everything they’ve got, making what Diamond once called “a beautiful noise.” If that sounds like what you’re looking for in a movie this holiday season, dig in. You could do worse.