Song Sung Blue (2025)

PG-13 for getting a little bit depressing.  Like, there's a whole drug addiction story going on that gets pretty low.  While tonally this is mostly family friendly, I can't deny that there's some very mild sexuality.  At one point, Mike walks around in his underwear.  Something quite traumatic happens to both characters.  There's also some on-screen trauma that has blood in it.  There's also a character named "Sex Machine."  I guess maybe it isn't all that family friendly.

DIRECTOR: Craig Brewer

In a million years did I think I would really like Song Sung Blue, I would have been shocked.  Yet, here we are, making me question why I like some things and not others.  I know.  Some of the real film nerds are questioning all my credentials.  Again, I get it.  I am almost in a place where I feel like I have to defend myself by sticking true to my guns.  You like what you like.  I happen to like this.  I'll even go as far as to say that it's a pretty darned good movie.  I mean, I've liked things that I'm aware is crap.  This isn't that.  Instead,  Song Sung Blue might be one of the better movies I've seen this year.

I also had the same opinion about Flamin' Hot, so who knows how much goodwill I have to spend.

On the surface, this is a movie that almost shouldn't be a movie.  At least, that's what the first act and the trailers sell to you. This is marketed as a quirky take on the biopic.  Instead of being a story about Neil Diamond, this is a story about impersonators.  (Okay, I refuse to use the terminology that the movie stresses.  From an outside perspective, this is about the world of impersonators.) And for the first hour, it's just a good time.  I didn't think that I would have that much of a good time about some wholesome goobers falling in love and putting on shows.  They get this Big-Fish-in-a-Small-Pond fame and it's cute.  Heck, it's way more romantic than a lot of rom coms I watched, especially if you know about the people that they're based on.  (That is rude on my part, but it's also kind of secretly the charm of the movie.) But then, Act II starts and the whole movie just starts gut punching the entire time.  Like, Mike keeps on trying to get his American Dream as Lightning, but it also makes us question the role of the American Dream the entire time.

I'm going to be the annoying English teacher once again on this blog.  My American Lit class is all about the American Dream.  It wasn't part of the plan initially when I made up the curriculum, but it kind of just played out that every novel we read, somehow, tied into the American Dream.  If the point of the class is to explore how authors explore the American Dream, we have to define it first.  The definition we usually land on at the beginning of the year is usually something around the following:  The American Dream states that any American can achieve anything, regardless of background, as long as they are willing to sacrifice to achieve that dream.  Usually, the greater the dream, the greater the sacrifice.  Mike and Claire --whom I want to refer to as "Lightning and Thunder" because the names are easier to remember --initially have a managable dream.  It's actually silly that the dream balloons the way it does, but that's part of the charm.  Anyway, they have this dream to make money doing a Neil Diamond tribute band.  (I refuse to call it "an experience.") And it seems like the whole thing is without a big sacrifice.  Mike has to betray one of his morals (which I guess isn't a small thing, unless it is to "respect Neil Diamond") to get what he wants.  But if anything, the entire American Dream part of it is filled with perks.  After all, it's Mike's enthusiasm towards this project that causes Claire to kiss him to begin with.

But the second that the two face adversity (which, I have to admit, is not new to these two), that dream is the first thing that is sacrificed.  And if we look at it through the lens of sacrifice and the American Dream, the thing that is stopping Mike from achieving the thing he wants is the fact that he loves his wife so much.  Usually, when we're offered a dream in these stories, the sacrifice is one's own life.  (Ultimately, that happens.)  I suppose in The Great Gatsby, there's a little bit of a muddying of dream v. true love.  But this is a question of Mike pursuing the Neil Diamond Experience (oops, I did it) or sticking with Claire.  The odd thing is that Song Sung Blue almost corrupts the notion of the American Dream.  Mike goes and does karaoke hosting as Neil Diamond, but always acknowledges that it is almost a perversion of the thing he loves, which is "Lightning and Thunder: A Neil Diamond Experience".  It's not something that he has to discover. (If anything, Mike is almost too perfect of a character in the story, which I don't hate in this film.) He knows that he doesn't want to do the Neil Diamond thing without Claire by his side.  This is one of those American Dream stories where you think that the dream is one thing, but the real dream is the thing you have all along.  Yeah, it's one of those.  I don't care if it's played out.  It's done really well here.

I'm in a weird place where I'm accidentally going to have to criticize Kate Hudson and I don't want to.  The reason that I watched Song Sung Blue is because Hudson is up for Best Actress.  And here's the thing: she's great.  While I don't know if I would necessarily say "Best Actress", I also don't want to fight that battle because she really is that good. It's just that...Hugh Jackman is also incredible in this role.  Sure, Kate Hudson's Claire has to go through the drug addiction element of this movie and she pulls that off.  I don't want to be sexist (which is a big red flag to even write), but I feel like this is more Mike's story.  As much as Mike doesn't backslide into the alcoholism that the film teases throughout, this is a story about his internal conflict all the way through the movie.  Mike confesses that he's suicidal because of the way that Claire treats him and you really feel that.  There's a scene that is really messed up where Mike has a heart attack in a hospital.  He asks his stepdaughter to shock him and a lot of it isn't explained why he doesn't just allow a doctor to take care of him.  In that moment, there's this epiphany that I had that made me think 1) he probably can't afford another medical bill on top of Claire's current stay at the hospital and 2) he doesn't want to distract a single doctor away from Claire's emergency procedure happening in the room over.  It's really screwed up that he makes his stepdaughter do this, but also it's a heck of a performance.

But he also probably didn't get the nomination not because he didn't deliver a top notch performance.  He probably didn't get it because there were already five entries in the category and --I hate to say it --Kate Hudson probably just squeaked into her category.  (That being said, I didn't love Ethan Hawke's performance in Blue Moon.)   That's gotta stink because Jackman kind of crushes in a movie that most of the world probably isn't going to see.  Yet, it's one of those movies that makes you kind of get excited about life.  I keep wanting to tell people that not everything is about money.  Sometimes, we do things because they make us feel alive.  What Song Sung Blue does incredibly well is tease a silly concept and makes us remember that love and passion is always going to be more imporant than selling your soul.  The reminder that musicians are "broke as a joke" doesn't pull away from the notion that Mike and Claire should keep doing this act, as silly as it might seem to the rest of us.  And I don't care if the story over-dramatized the real events.  I know that Mike didn't get the heart attack and head injury the day of the big show where he was going to meet the real Neil Diamond.  But for the sake of storytelling, that's a fantastic third act.  

And I love that Claire is still in that world.  She is someone who found her exact role in this life and loved it.  I know that so much has been taken away from her, but that story seems like she would do it all over again in a heartbeat.  It's one of those genuine love stories that is about mutual love and respect.  Maybe the real Mike and Claire weren't that great, but I'd like to think that maybe they were.