{"id":51119,"date":"2025-12-23T15:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T20:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=51119"},"modified":"2025-12-22T16:21:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T21:21:58","slug":"song-sung-blue-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/23\/song-sung-blue-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Song Sung Blue [2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The true story of husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute band \u201cLightning and Thunder\u201d is told in Craig Brewer\u2019s frustrating generic biopic Song Sung Blue.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Song Sung Blue will be your aunt\u2019s favorite movie this holiday season. She\u2019ll call it sweet and touching; harp on the characters’ connections, say \u201cit’s cute\u201d, and love the Neil Diamond songs. And that\u2019s fine. We all like what we like. This Strawman Aunt will love Song Sung Blue. I didn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve not seen the 2008 documentary of the same title by Greg Kohls. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s exactly true, what\u2019s altered for cinema storytelling, what\u2019s amalgamated, and what\u2019s straight up false in this story of a pair of Neil Diamond tribute artists, known as \u201cLighting and Thunder\u201d on stage and Mike and Clair Sadina in real life. But I\u2019m curious if the real story is as formulaic, simple, and blandly grating as Brewer\u2019s film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fine. I didn\u2019t hate it, don\u2019t get me wrong. But I sure didn\u2019t like it. Cloying, sentimental, and schmaltzy, Song Sung Blue is so blandly intoned it\u2019s frustrating. It\u2019s a movie about a tribute band, so it\u2019s fitting it feels like a tribute to a movie: it hits all the expected notes of the genre\/artist without changing a moment, going through the oft-performed beats because that\u2019s exactly what the target audience wants to see. Is that too easy, too low-hanging fruit? Eh, the movie goes there, so I will, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman make the movie watchable and, dare I say, enjoyable enough. They drive the movie through the melodramatic slush. They both give committed performances as the couple of Mike and Claire. They are never truly believable, Jackman being Jackman and Hudson going deep into Wisconsin Housewife accent territory, dontchaknow; they sometimes feel, to use a comment a second time, like tribute instead of the characters. But they have real chemistry and charm, and it goes a long way. You can\u2019t help but love them. The remainder of the cast is fine, too. The step-daughters (each of the blended family comes with one) played by Ella Anderson and King Princess have an ease. Jim Belushi follows Hudson into Accent City; he\u2019s having fun. I always love to see Fisher Stevens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s so weirdly on the nose as they go through the rise, troubles, and fall. It’s the music biopic structure to a tee. Scenes are loaded with exposition and such direct phrasings. (Looking at your first time the daughters meet; that was a hugely awkward backstory and trauma dropping). Strong feelings are discussed and felt, bad things happen, and people stumble. But it\u2019s all just as expected; where it should happen in the movie, and how we\u2019ve seen a hundred times; every beat is just as expected as a group of drunken White middle-aged bar patrons screaming \u201cBA BA BA\u201d during the chorus of Sweet Caroline during karaoke. Speaking of, every now and then the movie stops to perform a Neil Diamond song, sometimes a snippet to jazz (singer\u2026 heh, now there\u2019s a truly awful Neil Diamond movie) the audience up with a \u201coh hey I know this\u201d moment, and just as often the full song, reading the theatre for \u201cunder the breath karaoke.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Song Sung Blue is so seriously sincere it hurts, never betraying the tropes it\u2019s trotting out. It\u2019s a weird disconnect to the artist tributed. I fully admit I really dig Neil Diamond. He has a great voice, and his songs have a beautiful flow. They are catchy and carry a certain something. Diamond\u2019s music has a certain self-aware cheesiness of glam and glamour. An aspect not found in the film at all.\u00a0 All the schlamtz found in Song Sung Blue is unnecessary, unlike Diamond\u2019s work.<\/span><\/p>\n

I said earlier that the movie is blandly inoffensive. That\u2019s not completely true. I took a grumbling grudge of a dash of offensiveness in how glibly some dramatic subjects are treated. Did you know you can get over depression, disability, and poverty by pure grit and positive thinking? The movie sure says so. It\u2019s the movie version of someone saying, \u201cYou\u2019re depressed? Have you tried taking a walk every day?\u201d Things that are big, real, troubles; the highs and lows of lives are nearly handwaved. Every issue just needs enough positive energy and push. But we don\u2019t watch that sort of movie to be depressed and be real, even with a true story.\u00a0<\/span>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of me thinks I\u2019m being too mean to the movie. It\u2019s well-meaning, there is no cynicism within the trite, and there is a certain something there. It has a spark that can\u2019t be denied. Maybe we need a bland cover here and there; the familiar with a few bars of a familiar song to sing along to. If we can sing to I\u2019m A Believer forty times, why not a well-trod film? I am annoyed at the ease with which the troubles are solved, but I can watch If I had Legs, I\u2019d Kick You if I want a better look at depression. I can watch this with my family if I want to smile and sing A Beautiful Noise and see a story of redemption and positive pushes among the grey.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, yeah, this write-up is a bit all over the place. So is the movie. And so is life. In this holiday season, it\u2019s not my highest recommendation; I\u2019d put just about everything else out there above it. But for what it is, if it becomes the 2nd choice of everyone, the Applebee\u2019s of this holiday season, try to enjoy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BAH BAH BAH, good times never felt so bland.<\/p>\n

[Btw, I cannot get the title song out of my head. HELP ME]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The true story of husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute band \u201cLightning and Thunder\u201d is told in Craig Brewer\u2019s frustrating generic biopic Song Sung Blue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[140,302,698],"class_list":["post-51119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-biopic","tag-drama","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51123,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51119\/revisions\/51123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}