Review: Song Sung Blue (2025)

Every time I watch a movie that's based on real events or real people, my defenses go up. Biopics, seemingly by their very nature, are often fictions, making superheroes out of people who are far more interesting in reality because their lives aren't sanitized or sanctified by screenwriters. Somewhere in the middle of Song Sung Blue, I decided I was being served up a string of tall tales. Surely nobody went through as much triumph and tragedy as the real Mike and Claire Sardina, better known by their stage name, Lightning and Thunder. When the end credits rolled and I saw that the film was based on a 2008 documentary of the same name, I knew I needed to see that film to unravel just how much of the story I'd just been told was actually real. 

As it turns out, many of the events presented in the movie really happened. Sure, the Neil Diamond tribute act called Lightning and Thunder never soared quite to the heights that the Hollywood film would have us believe, and it goes without saying that neither Mike nor Claire Sardina had the movie star good looks of Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, but the broad strokes--from health challenges to their comeback--is true...well, mostly. The feature film version, written and directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Coming 2 America) definitely exaggerates to a degree that stirs up my distaste for biopics, which almost always trend toward the saccharine. No exception here. 

Fortunately, Song Sung Blue has a solid duo in the lead in the form of Jackman and Hudson. Hugh Jackman hasn't been shy about his song-and-dance tendencies, anchoring the Hollywood musical The Greatest Showman years ago, but his presence here definitely elevates the material beyond being only maudlin melodrama (the be clear: this is, at its very core, a maudlin melodrama). But the real star here is Kate Hudson, who has a strong and powerful singing voice and who carries so much of the movie on her shoulders. Downplay it though he might, Jackman is a six-foot-three action movie star with bulging muscles and visible abs. While he may bear a very passing resemblance to the real Mike Sardina, it's Kate Hudson who serves as the heart of the film: a single mom who is raising a family during tough times, making ends meet by performing as Patsy Cline in a celebrity impersonator show until Mike enters the picture. For me, it's Claire who is the focal point of the story, reacting to the storm that Lightning and Thunder brings into their lives. 

Since this is a movie about a Neil Diamond tribute act, there's a lot of Neil Diamond music. I like Neil well enough, especially his earlier work, but the constant presence of Diamond's middle-of-the-road music is a little bit of a problem for this movie, which also sticks to the middle of the road. To be blunt, it's too safe. Having now seen the documentary, the real people are much more flawed, and therefore interesting, than their glitzy counterparts. The real Mike and Claire started smoking to get into shape for the stage. Later in the 2008 documentary, Claire says that her voice is no longer broadway quality because of what cigarettes have done to it...but she doesn't stop smoking. Even after her husband is hospitalized for a heart illness, they're still puffing away. Now, I understand why the Hollywood version didn't want to go there, but it's just one example of several that humanizes these characters and makes them more approachable. People do strange things. Self-destructive things. But I'm not sure the movie wants these characters to be approachable. It wants to put them on the same stage as Freddie Mercury and Elton John and Elvis, biopic superstars who soar above the fray on wings of wax, destined to fall, but also to be resurrected greater than they ever were. The real people behind this film didn't have the ending that this movie depicts, and I can't help but feel like it's a disservice to them. But as time has taught us again and again, we don't go to the movies for truth, we go to the movies to be entertained. 

I didn't particularly enjoy Song Sung Blue, but I did enjoy Kate Hudson's performance, which I think is a big level up for her. If I ever watch the movie again, it will be because Hudson has found another gear in her craft, delivering a performance that I hesitate to call fearless (too many people call actors fearless), but I can think of no other way to describe it. She gained weight for the part, often appears without any makeup, and has stripped away any sense of glamour or artifice that movie stars, by their very nature, possess. She's that good, and the awards buzz around her performance is well-deserved. 

Song Sung Blue is a hard movie for me to recommend. It trades in forced sentimentality to a degree that puts me off, but I can't deny that the story itself is strange, curious, and oddly compelling. When it's at its best, the movie is sticking close to the true story. When it ventures into flights of movie fantasy--especially in the climactic scenes--it loses me. I love a Hollywood ending, but not at the expense of something real.