Hugh Jackman plays recovering alcoholic Lightning and Kate Hudson is the heavily accented Thunder in director Craig Brewer's Song Sung Blue.Courtesy of Focus Features/Supplied
Song Song Blue
Directed by Craig Brewer
Written by Craig Brewer, based on the documentary by Greg Kohs
Starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson and Michael Imperioli
Classification PG; 132 minutes
Opens in theatres Dec. 25
It helps to walk into the new romantic drama Song Sung Blue – which carries an ostensibly ridiculous premise in that it follows two lovers in a Milwaukee-based Neil Diamond cover band named Lightning and Thunder – knowing two things.
The first is that it is a period drama, set mostly in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. The second is that the band was a very real thing, with the story of Mike “Lightning” Sardina and his wife Claire “Thunder” Sardina already chronicled in a 2008 documentary by Greg Kohs (also titled Song Sung Blue).
That basis of fact is almost essential to situating Craig Brewer’s new film, which opens with such a peculiar tone – not quite straight-faced, but not ironic, either – that it’s initially difficult to suss out whether the director is having a laugh at the expense of either his characters, his audience, or both.
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About 15 minutes in, though, the particular rhythms and realism of Lightning and Thunder’s world fully takes hold, especially as Brewer more or less gives his film over to the deep charismatic wells of his two stars, Hugh Jackman (as the recovering alcoholic Lightning) and Kate Hudson (as the heavily accented Thunder).
Sure, your mileage may vary here depending on how deep your knowledge and love of Diamond’s catalogue goes – it helps immensely if you know the lyrics to Soolaimon just as well as Forever in Blue Jeans or, god helps us all, Sweet Caroline – but Jackman and Hudson almost make up any difference.
Hugh Jackman is a finessed force of nature, but Kate Hudson matches her co-star beat for beat and bar for bar.Courtesy of Focus Features/Supplied
As do the eclectically assembled supporting players, including The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli (who makes a surprisingly good Buddy Holly impersonator) and Jim Belushi (as Lightning and Thunder’s gee-golly-whiz tour manager).
Even when the story – which, I must stress again, is 100 per cent real – stretches its levels of credibility to swerve into celebrity-cameo territory and then, jarringly enough, deep tragedy, its two stars hold the audience close and tight.
Jackman is such a finessed force of nature that he’s as good as you might expect, but Hudson – who never quite landed as juicy a part as in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, which is now more than a quarter-century old – matches her co-star beat for beat, bar for bar. Good times, they never seemed so good.