Song Sung Blue: A Review - A Bizarre and Bewildering Bio-Pic

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. This is one of the strangest stories and movies I’ve seen in a while. It isn’t the slightest bit good, but it could be something worth watching just to see the absolute insanity of it all.

Song Sung Blue, starring Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman, is a bio-pic that chronicles the tumultuous life and times of Mike and Claire Sardina, a duo who back in the 1990s performed as Lightning and Thunder – a Neil Diamond tribute band.

The film, which is written and directed by Craig Brewer and is based on the Greg Kohs book of the same name, hit theatres on Christmas Day and is now available to stream on Peacock…which is where I just watched it.

I don’t know how else to say this but…Song Sung Blue is one of the most batshit crazy movies I’ve seen in a long time. What makes it all the more insane is that it is actually a true story.

I went into Song Sung Blue expecting a sort of light-hearted, feel-good, little love story or rom-com type of movie featuring Jackman and Hudson doing their usual charming movie star turns, getting some laughs, and singing some Neil Diamond songs – a decent enough formula.

The film certainly seems like just that exact thing through the first hour of its two-hour and twelve-minute runtime. Then, literally out of nowhere, things go absolutely apeshit. And when I say absolutely apeshit…I mean…ABSOLUTELY APESHIT.

I will not give any spoilers about this movie at all because that wouldn’t be fair to readers and also you wouldn’t believe me if I told you anyway. Let’s just say that Song Sung Blue is definitely not a romance or a rom-com or a feel-good sing-song fun time. No, Song Sung Blue is definitely a drama…a bad, hackneyed drama, but a drama nonetheless.

Apparently, the Mike and Claire Sardina story – which is essentially a modern version of the Book of Job chronicling the plagues through which these two poor people must suffer, is somewhat well-known, but it wasn’t well-known to me, and frankly, it is so insanely crazy that it feels fake…like something conjured in the mind of a psychologically-twisted soap opera writer who is very drunk and also on copious amounts of psychedelics.

Writer/director Craig Brewer struggles mightily to make this outrageous story feel the least bit real. It’s shot like a bad Hallmark channel movie, and it features some of the most bizarre scenes and sequences you’ve ever seen in your life. The one overriding characteristic of the film is that it is drowned under a gigantic tsunami of schmaltz.

There’s a bevy of paper-thin, cardboard cutout characters that do not in any way resemble human beings, who all have hearts of gold and soft-smiles. There’s a cavalcade of ludicrous situations made all the more ludicrous by the ham-fisted way in which they are executed. There’s also a hospital sequence that, like much of the rest of the film, feels like an SNL skit that was cut from the show because it was too over-the-top, unintentionally funny and also it made no sense.

Kate Hudson has been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her work as Claire – Thunder to Mike’s Lightning. Hudson does all the things she thinks she’s supposed to do…wears frumpy clothes, talks with a Midwestern accent, and all the rest…but what she doesn’t do is even try to hide the fact that she is trying really hard to act. Everything she does seems fake and completely devoid of any genuine humanity. It is all posing and preening and seems like someone not particularly good at acting trying really hard to actually act and signal to you that she’s acting.

Hudson, who has in her life been married to two prominent singers – Chris Robinson (of The Black Crows) and Matt Bellamy (of Muse), has fancied herself a singer in recent years and even put out an album in 2024. It seems like she took this role so she’d have a chance to sing on screen…no shame in that I suppose…but it all feels so forced and not organic and more than a little performative in a self-conscious, cutesy way.  

Hugh Jackman, always one to want to break into song and/or dance, does his usual Hugh Jackman stuff as Mike. He pushes way too hard and overacts a helluva lot, and it all feels like a sort-of-gay, theatre-muffin Wolverine is now the lead singer of a Neil Diamond tribute band.

Jackman’s singing, which is not something I think is generally very good, actually fits this character as he is not supposed to be all that great…so mission accomplished. But the more complicated emotional acting stuff needed from Jackman is not nearly as successful.

There are a cornucopia of supporting turns by the likes of Michael Imperioli – as a Buddy Holly impersonator, and Jim Belushi as a bus driver, and Fisher Stevens as a dentist, that are all rather cringe-worthy in their vacuity….so there’s that.

The strangest thing about this movie is how it tackles some rather enormous dramatic material in the most thoughtless and frivolous of ways. It is such a tonally deaf and emotionally obtuse movie that it frankly feels kind of offensive towards the real people it is dramatizing and their sizable real-life suffering.

Maybe I am either over or under-thinking the whole thing. Maybe making a schmaltzy, saccharine and slightly unhinged movie about two slightly unhinged people who make a life out of singing the saccharine and schmaltzy anthems of Neil Diamond is the point of all this. If so, then…I guess they did their job. But unfortunately, the movie just doesn’t work except in having you continually shaking your head and dropping your jaw in disbelief at what just happened on the screen.

I was thinking that this might be the type of movie that certain segments of the population might seek out and enjoy. Older audiences who are Neil Diamond fans might seek it out. And Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson fans as well. But I can’t help but think that they would have the same expectations that I did going in and really be shocked, and probably disappointed, at what they find.

Those who go into the film knowing it is a drama might receive it a bit better, but only people who like a rather broad and basic type of drama will truly enjoy it – and I don’t say that as a negative judgement on those people, just in an attempt to properly categorize the film.

The bottom line is that I don’t think this is a good film…but it might be a fun film to watch just to see how batshit it really is – just know that going in and it will make the viewing experience more worthwhile. So, if you want to spend a little over two hours laughing at the poorly rendered misery of two very unfortunate real-people…then Song Sung Blue might be for you.

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