Song Sung Blue

If you’ve found most recent music biopics to be snoozefests severely lacking in good old-fashioned melodrama, we bring good news. That is, unless you’re allergic to sequins, luxuriant wigs and the musical stylings of Neil Diamond.

No Hollywood screenwriter would dare write anything as bonkers as Song Sung Blue unless there was a true story behind it. Adapted from the little-seen 2008 documentary of the same title, this is not a straightforward Neil Diamond biopic. Instead, it’s the unlikely true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, aka Lightning & Thunder, a Neil Diamond tribute act that took their native Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by storm in the 1990s before they were forced to reckon with the impact of a terrible accident.

Mike (Hugh Jackman) is a recovering alcoholic Vietnam veteran and a reluctant member of the musical-impersonator circuit who wishes he could play as himself. An enjoyable early sequence sees him backstage at a funfair sideshow with a troupe of tribute acts, including the long-suffering Mark (Michael Imperioli) performing as Buddy Holly. Patsy Cline impersonator and single mum Claire (Kate Hudson) catches Mike’s eye, and it only takes one jam session and her insistence that they become interpreters, not impersonators, for them to form their Neil Diamond tribute band and fall into each other’s arms.

We’re soon whisked off on an A Star Is Born-style ascent, with a disastrous gig for rowdy bikers disgusted by the glitter giving way to opening for Pearl Jam. Jokes abound about there being more to Neil Diamond than ‘Sweet Caroline’, but, “Nostalgia pays,” as Claire observes, and it’s hard not to smile when the film deploys the strongest weapon in its arsenal. Jackman and Hudson might not have quite as much sparkling chemistry to convince as a couple head-over-heels for each other but they’re immensely watchable on stage together, and it’s in their musical performances that the film really comes to life.

But what is apparently a fairly standard rags-to-riches story is ruptured by the kind of tragic twists of fate that wouldn’t be out of place on a soap, and in its second half the film threatens to become too campy and overwrought to be affecting. Writer and director Craig Brewer — whose back catalogue includes films about unlikely stranger-than-fiction wannabes (Dolemite Is My Name) but also pale imitations of original works (Coming 2 America) — just about holds it all together. But Song Sung Blue’s biggest triumph is in reminding us of Kate Hudson’s under-sung talent and enormous charm. Warm, honest and understated, not to mention her excellent Milwaukee accent, if there’s any justice in the world her performance will get her booked and busy with the substantial roles she deserves.