Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!
I’m extremely white. A few years ago, when it was the thing to do, I had my DNA run on 23 and Me and the results were than 99.9% of my DNA is from the British Isles, northern Europe, and Scandanavia. A substantial amount of my ancestry could chuck a rock into the Arctic Circle. What this means is that there are a few things I can count myself an expert in. One of those is white people music. The whitest music ever made isn’t country or bluegrass or polka. It’s Neil Diamond. That being the case, it was only a matter of time before we got a movie that featured Diamond’s music, and thus we have Song Sung Blue.
Song Sung Blue is a biopic, but it’s not a biopic of Neil Diamond himself. Instead, it’s about Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) and his wife Claire (Kate Hudson, who was Oscar-nominated for this role). The two made a living in part as tribute musicians, with Claire specializing as Patsy Cline. They realize that Mike, who calls himself “Lightning,” could probably pull off a Neil Diamond tribute band (what he styles instead as a Neil Diamond experience).
And thus Lightning and Thunder are born. The two hire on a number of the other tribute musicians to back them up, assisted by manager Tom (Jim Belushi) and booker Dave (Fisher Stevens). After a false start or two, they are suddenly getting gig work regularly, and Thunder and Lightning become fan favorites of the Milwaukee area. At one point, they are even popular enough to open for Pearl Jam, and Eddie Vedder joins them on stage.
But, of course, there are going to be flies in this ointment and monkeys in this wrench. Mike is a recovering alcoholic, although to be fair to him, it is very much under control through the film, something I was actually a little surprised by. Having Mike struggle with alcoholism honestly seems like a natural place to go. Much more serious in terms of the film is Mike’s dodgy heart. The threat of a heart attack is always looming.
But it’s Claire whose issues and tragedies drive the movie. Just as the act is starting to pay off and pay for their lives, she is involved in a freak accident. While she is working in their front garden, she is struck by a car and loses her left leg below the knee. Depression, addiction to painkillers, and accusations that Mike is cheating on her follow, and setting up a third act where the two reconcile, deal with the issues of their children (one from his previous marriage, two from hers) and try to get their lives back on track.
But let’s be honest about Song Sung Blue: this is not really a movie that you are going to watch to see how Claire Sardina deals with her accident or how the family handles the pregnancy of Claire’s daughter. You show up here for the songs.
The two songs that you know you’re going to get are Song Sung Blue (name of the movie, after all) and Sweet Caroline, which is the unofficial theme song of celebrating white people everywhere. But the truth is that Neil Diamond wrote a ton of songs—Forever in Blue Jeans, Holly Holy, I Am…I Said, Cherry Cherry, Longfellow Serenade and more. The man pumped out a lot of hits, and a lot of them, cheesy as they are, are absolute bangers.
We do need to talk a bit about Kate Hudson, who is the reason I watched this. Hudson has had a career that honestly should have probably been better. She’s been good at times--The Skeleton Key is underknown and underappreciated. In Song Sung Blue, she is good. Is she Oscar nomination good? Honestly, I don’t know yet—I don’t know that I’ve seen enough from the year to make that determination yet, but she is very good when she’s on camera. Hugh Jackman is going to take up a lot of the oxygen in a lot of scenes, but she holds her own. That in and of itself is noteworthy.
Song Sung Blue is fine. I don’t know that it’s a movie that would ever need to be watched a second time.
Why to watch Song Sung Blue: Honestly, those songs are bulletproof.
Why not to watch: Bulletproof or not it’s the whitest music ever.
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