“Nostalgia pays,” pronounces Claire (Kate Hudson) to Mike (Hugh Jackman) in Song Sung Blue. Craig Brewer believes the same about kitsch and schmaltz, both of which are heartily peddled by the writer/director’s latest, which hits theaters Dec. 25.
Desperate to be the feel-good film of the holiday season and yet compromised by a flabby middle section that stops the action dead in its tracks, this “based on a true love story” about a pair of musical “interpreters” who come together to form a Neil Diamond tribute act is tailor-made for the singer-songwriter’s fans, and elevated by appealing turns from its headliners.
Yanking unashamedly at the heartstrings, however, it’s a manipulative and uneven tune that strains to elicit the sniffles it so hungrily seeks.
Twenty years after he broke through with Hustle & Flow, Brewer tells another story about underdog musicians trying to make it big while contending with everyday working-class hardships. For middle-aged Mike, that’s not simply alcoholism but a career that hasn’t panned out as he hoped; though he likes to go by his rock-god alias Lightning, he’s a two-bit wannabe scraping by playing in various bands, including a Legends act in which he’s supposed to perform as Don Ho.
Mike balks at this, thereby ruffling the feathers of his boss and friend Mark Shurilla (Michael Imperioli), who doubles on stage as Buddy Holly. Still, this turns out to be a wholly successful night, since he catches the eye of Claire, who does a mean Patsy Cline and whose interest in Mike is immediately reciprocated.
Mike believes in himself and doesn’t think he should have to pretend to be someone else (“I should be enough”). His confidence is shared by his manager and dentist Dave Watson (Fisher Stevens)—who gives him a replacement tooth engraved with a lightning bolt to match the one on his trademark jacket—as well as Claire, who’s long admired him and who convinces him to consider creating a Neil Diamond show.
Their initial duets, shared around the living room of the suburban house Claire shares with teenage daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson), son Dayna (Hudson Hensley), and her hard-of-hearing mom (Cecelia Riddett) produce sparks. Before you know it, they’re partnering together as Lightning and Thunder, as well as making sweet music as a couple.
Thanks to Brian smoothing things out between Mike and Mark, they also get a second manager, Tom D’Amato (Jim Belushi), who’s well-connected at the local casinos and begins booking them in small venues.
Lighting and Thunder’s maiden show is a washout thanks to a crowd full of bikers and Mike’s insistence that the band—which comes to include Mark—open with “Soolaimon,” which, in one of the film’s running jokes, no one can properly pronounce. This is an example of Mike’s stubbornness, but he’s not as inflexible as he seems, since Song Sung Blue only wants to color its protagonist with faint touches of darkness.
Mike’s battle with the bottle is basically a non-issue, and his me-first attitude is quickly washed away by his adoration of Claire, a self-assured and spunky songstress whom Hudson infuses with vibrant personality. Simultaneously willing to stand up for herself and her ideas, and doggedly loyal to her boyfriend’s (and, eventually, spouse’s) vision, Claire is an upbeat dreamer, and Hudson’s performance and comfortable chemistry with Jackman boost the proceedings’ early passages.
Based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, Song Sung Blue’s first peak occurs when, out of the blue, Mike and Claire—who’ve become something of a local Milwaukee sensation—receive a call from Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith), inviting them to open for the band.
Despite Mike’s cluelessness about the grunge icons, this news wows everyone else, including Mike’s daughter Angelina (King Princess), who swiftly bonds with Rachel over their shared experiences with “scattered” parents beset by addictive personalities that are soothed only by music.
It’s Lighting and Thunder’s big break, yet in its aftermath, terrible calamity strikes, bringing a halt to the band’s ascendant fortunes and, also, the buoyant atmosphere of the film, which subsequently takes a detour into morose trauma, replete with debilitating injuries, heart attacks, pill-popping, and domestic strains that threaten to forever ruin the good times.
Though Song Sung Blue’s narrative particulars are true and tragic, its calculations remain off-putting; Brewer wallows in Mike and Claire’s difficulties to an egregious degree, all while muting his color palette (to heighten the dour mood) and temporarily tabling the big Diamond songbook numbers that had previously kept things spirited.
The characters’ misfortune certainly complicates the melodrama’s sappy uplift. In the process, though, it thwarts momentum, not to mention forces Jackman and Hudson to engage in the sort of angry, agonized over-acting designed for Academy Award nomination clips. This is merely the fall before the comeback, of course, but the writer/director’s attempts at balancing his tale’s ups and downs is unsteady; once the film’s energy stalls, it never manages to completely rev back to life.
For all of Song Sung Blue’s italicized comments about the desire to entertain and disappearing in the music, it really just cares about making hearts soar and then shattering them to pieces—a schematic plot structure that’s as wearisome as it is telegraphed, most clumsily via one character’s foreboding chest pains.
The idea, as it were, is that by pretending to be someone else, Mike and Claire find each other, love, and their voices. Nonetheless, no matter how hard he tries, Brewer can’t put enough gloss on this footnote-y story to make it totally shine. Nor, ultimately, can he quite generate a rousing sense of Neil Diamond’s catalog as an across-the-board unifier, his showstoppers proficiently performed by Jackman and Hudson but lacking an oomph that might convince the unconverted that “Cracklin’ Rose,” “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “I’ve Been This Way Before,” and “Sweet Caroline” are akin to modern standards.
In the end, it’s less about the notes played than the clunkiness with which Brewer hits them. When belting out Diamond classics in low-rent venues, Jackman and Hudson briefly distract attention away from the surrounding mush. They can’t, however, overshadow the fact that, in the end, Song Sung Blue primarily trades in bittersweet underdog corniness.
