There is joy, energy – and indeed no little irony – about the way in which Hollywood A-listers Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson have launched themselves into playing and singing the parts of a working-class couple from Milwaukee with big dreams and big hair.
Song Sung Blue tells the story of a real-life couple, Mike Sardina (1951-2006) and Claire Stengl/Sardina, who formed a Neil Diamond tribute band in the early 1990s and attempted to live out their dreams performing in local venues, becoming local celebrities under the name Lightning and Thunder.
The plot is about the pair’s desire and a need to fulfil their musical dream, but it has a way of jolting them – and the viewer – again and again out of the dream and back into the cold reality of wintry Milwaukee as stuff keeps happening to them. Sardina/Lightning is a Vietnam veteran with a history of addiction, and has cardio-vascular problems have a way coming back and haunting him, particularly when he is on stage doing a crucially important gig. Stengl gets hit by a car in a freak accident which leaves her as an amputee below the knee, and she then becomes totally confused by the drugs she has been prescribed.
But the key to the film, and one of the main ways in which it has appeal, is the dogged determination that they maintain together to keep their dream alive. There is humour and warmth about the enterprise too: after Claire’s accident they are saved from having no gigs at all by the generous offer to perform in an impossibly twee Thai restaurant.
The film is actually a scripted feature version of a documentary finished in 2008, also called Song Sung Blue. For the maker of the documentary Greg Kohs – he has a co-writer credit for the new film – the whole endeavour had been a labour of love lasting many years. In the neat way that art and life can resolve each other, the real-life Claire takes a small role in the new star-studded film.
Another key to the film’s appeal is the soundtrack, and the particular variety of feelgood anthemics which Neil Diamond’s songs bring to it. Both the stars sing their own parts, and do so with palpable enthusiasm – and strong voices. They got to know each other when they recorded the songs over a backing track with top quality musicians, the filming came later.
Director Craig Brewer has developed a speciality of building films around music, in partnership with his regular musical collaborator Scott Bomar. The sequence of the songs in the film has been given particular attention: it is clear that sooner or later “Sweet Caroline” is going to have an outing, because it expresses the feeling of connection so well (“Reachin' out/ Touching me, touchin' you) but Brewer and Bomar have consciously held it back until near the end.
Craig Brewer has said of the film, forcefully: “We root for underdogs because their struggle is our song. We need to see real people triumph over adversity.” It is a strong and timely message.
- Song Sung Blue is in UK and Irish cinemas from 1 January 2026
- More film reviews on theartsdesk
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