“Song Sung Blue” is a Little Off-Key
What does it mean to make a film based on a true story? From the production side of things, how much do you owe to the real person whose story you’re turning into a movie? On the audience side, does it matter what’s true? As a viewer, how you answer that question will inform many of your opinions about Craig Brewer’s Song Sung Blue. While based on a true story, more than a few creative liberties were taken in adapting the tale of two midwestern parents who simply wanted to find a way to make a living making music.
Mike (Hugh Jackman), or as he prefers to be called, Lightning, celebrates twenty years of sobriety. Every year on what he calls his “sober birthday,” he sings Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue.” Mike tells the members of his AA meeting that Neil Diamond’s music got him through the rough years and continues to keep him on track. While he’s proud of his sobriety, other aspects of his life are not as celebratory. He’s behind on house payments, his daughter (King Princess) lives full-time with his ex-wife, he’s got a heart condition he refuses to address, and he really, really wants to play music as Lightning, but no one’s listening. Claire (Kate Hudson), a Patsy Cline impersonator, encourages Mike to play Neil Diamond’s music. Not as an impersonator, but as an interpreter. Mike loves the idea and insists she join him. Together, they’re Lightning & Thunder and they take Wisconsin by storm.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
The first half of Song Sung Blue feels like a perfect Christmas-movie-watching affair for the family. Well, maybe not the young kids, but everyone else, Neil Diamond fan or not. Song Sung Blue initially comes across as a sweet little movie about two plucky outcasts who found each other and found music. To see them go from the garage to the stage to opening for Pearl Jam, is a whirlwind that’s deeply endearing. This portion of Song Sung Blue feels like an antidote to tired music biopics. The person who creates any type of art is only half the equation. Instead of focusing on Neil Diamond, Song Sung Blue chose two people who are on the other side of the equation. They’re people who love the music in a deep, profound way that only a fan can. It’s a choice that adds life to the genre by subverting it, while still giving Neil Diamond fans his greatest hits.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
The second half of Song Sung Blue is a different story. Claire and Mike experience a true, traumatic turning point that changes their trajectory. What happens after, however, is less rooted in reality. To go into the specifics would be to give too much information to those who are still interested in the film, but much of what is scripted has been bulked up by the Hollywood treatment. One tragedy after another is piled onto the sweet couple the audience has grown to love, for no other purpose than Hollywood’s idea that tragedy breeds importance. That they cannot have their big, important movie without some sort of profoundly awful events that try the characters’ strength. That poses an interesting, macabre dilemma when it’s real people whose story is being adapted for the silver screen. Is it wrong to purposefully escalate drama when there are plenty of true stories that are stranger than fiction? There are, of course, exceptions, like 2023’s The Iron Claw. In that film, a real-life tragedy was omitted because filmmakers were worried audiences wouldn’t believe the many hardships of the family. But is it another thing entirely to add more pain to a story that, like most of the lives of the people watching, has its ebbs and flows of loss, joy, and love?
While Jackman may be the frontman for the band and Song Sung Blue, it’s Hudson who provides the real magic. She’s magnetic from the moment she’s introduced, singing a Patsy Cline song, to the very end, when the movie has chewed her up and spit her out. It’s the kind of performance that’s going to break your heart and put it back together again, even when the film itself tries your patience. Song Sung Blue knows how to carry a tune, but isn’t quite sure how to write its own melody.
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