Publication Date: 12-31-2025

Song Sung Blue (2025) review

Dir. Craig Brewer

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

I ran the gamut of emotions while watching Song Sung Blue, a new film chronicling the career of Lightning and Thunder, a Milwaukee couple who performed as a Neil Diamond tribute band. One minute, I was eagerly rocking in my theater seat, whisper-singing along to Hugh Jackman’s impromptu rendition of “Cracklin’ Rosie” while gyrating in his underwear. By the end, I was fighting tears — my blepharitis came in handy, for once — while mouthing the words to “Brother Love’s Travelin’ Salvation Show” amidst Jackman and Kate Hudson’s concert medley of Diamond bangers.

What happened? In recent years, my expectations for musical biopics has plummeted faster than the COVID-era fascination for Tiger King. Well, Craig Brewer’s dramatization of the 2008 documentary on the same couple, takes the Where the Heart Is-approach to its story. It’s a heartland tale of a Midwest couple who work hard for what little they have, and once their lives get on track, it all falls apart with no warning, with one crisis after another. Throughout the film are what you can call “hard to swallow pills” about the fruitlessness of dreams without financial means, and the tragedy of those so close to getting what they desire out of life only to be setback by cruel circumstance.

Mike Sardina (Jackman) is a recovering alcoholic and Vietnam vet exhausted at the thought of singing Don Ho covers to a crowd who knows “Tiny Bubbles” and not much else. After backing out of a gig at the Wisconsin State Fair, he meets a beautiful young mom-of-two named Claire (Hudson), who becomes Patsy Cline whenever she steps on stage. She admires Mike, whose nickname is “Lightning,” and his passion, and the chemistry is palpable even as Claire is hurrying to get on stage. The two decide, practically in the span of a first date, that they should form a duo, in which she is “Thunder,” who sing Neil Diamond songs. And not just “Sweet Caroline” either. Save that for the encore.

Mike and Claire enjoy solid success as a Neil Diamond tribute, admittedly after a rocky start, with their Badger-Bus-driver-turned-manager (a cartoonish Jim Belushi) learning on the fly. Mike tries to form a relationship with Claire’s daughters, Rachel (Ella Anderson), a teen with too much responsibility, and Dayna (Hudson Hensley), a plucky, precocious young boy. Instead, Rachel connects more with Mike’s daughter, Angelina (singer King Princess), and the two share a tender moment, on a backyard swingset, where they talk about the flaws, foibles, and beautiful aspects of the sole parents in their lives.

All I’ll say is about 50 minutes into Song Sung Blue, something (literally) takes a sharp pivot and horrifically changes the lives of the characters, the tone, and the direction of the film. If you don’t know the story of Lightning and Thunder, and I suspect most won’t, that scene and the subsequent events will might give you whiplash. Several moments made my unexpectedly large audience of gray-haired retirees gasp and shriek. This is not a criticism, but a warning. This might be the saddest mainstream release since The Iron Claw, another film I liked that I’m not sure I’ll ever want to watch again.

Rocking long, jet black hair that looks like it smells like the woodgrain walls of a lived-in Wisconsin home, Hugh Jackman plays the showman role with predictable poise and authenticity. He grows with Brewer’s characterization of Mike, who comes across as a cocky jagoff with delusions of grandeur in the early scenes, but slowly evolves into a smart, sensitive husband and father. Brewer’s framing is conscious to the point where we keep waiting for Mike to relapse and break his 20 years of sobriety from alcohol; whether he’s looking completely disheveled, or holding a bottle of motor oil in his hand like a fifth. Jackman is a natural when he’s on stage singing “Holly Holly,” but he shows his true acting chops here when he makes us question his present mental state.

But it’s Kate Hudson who turns in one of her strongest performances in recent memory. She nails the character of Claire, a warm, exuberant woman, albeit a troubled one, who, upon getting a taste of true love and living her dream, is faced with the saddest of circumstances, resigns to a headspace that oscillates between disconnected and angry. Anyone who has lived with or been in the company of someone suffering from drug-induced mental anguish will recognize her look. Hudson nails it, no more evident than when her sullen demeanor casts a noticeable dark cloud on your mood during the second act.

Song Sung Blue slaps other biopics — ones about Amy Winehouse, Queen/Freddie Mercury, and Bob Marley to name names — across the face by daring to show the unglamorous side of the music business. The cinematic formula is played in such a way to appear as if Amy Winehouse split with her boyfriend, cried into a couple glasses of wine, and then the next morning, strummed a couple chords and magically came up with “Back to Black” before the hangover wore off. In contrast, Brewer’s film and screenplay shows Lightning’s cathartic visits to the dentist where he explains his money woes. In another scene, he changes a car’s oil; the car belongs to Sex Machine (Mustafa Shakir), a James Brown impersonator. Most nights, Lightning can be found on his La-Z-Boy recliner after sweating a handful of bills at the dining room table.

Where Brewer fumbles the bag, so to speak, is during the climax. One element that would’ve behooved Song Sung Blue is a true sense of time and place. The absence of clarity in the timeline catches up to the story after Lightning and Thunder hold a jam-packed revival concert. Without spoiling anything, we’re led to believe, based on prior contextual clues, that it’s roughly the summer of 1996. However, the timeline of the real-life Sardinas and the subsequent events portrayed following the revival show didn’t occur until the mid-2000s. It comes across as a jumble, all while Claire’s children, Rachel and Dayna, don’t appear to have aged at all. This makes an otherwise endearing final five minutes less impactful because what preceded it was such a chronological hodgepodge of events. Perhaps Brewer assumed viewers’ eyes would be so misty and clogged with tears, they wouldn’t notice. Not the worst assumption, although I’d argue if Lightning was a man half-as-passionate as he’s portrayed in this film, he would’ve given Brewer an earful and demanded another cut.

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Ella Anderson, Hudson Hensley, King Princess, Michael Imperioli, Mustafa Shakir, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi, and John Beckwith. Directed by: Craig Brewer.