There are a lot of ways that “Song Sung Blue” — a film about real Milwaukee Neil Diamond tribute act Lighting and Thunder — could have gone awry. The premise alone could be a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
Instead, the Craig Brewer movie hews closer to tragedy and stars Hugh Jackman (who couldn’t do irony if he tried) as Mike Sardina aka Lightning, and Kate Hudson, as Mike’s devoted wife and bandmate Claire, aka Thunder.
It’s based on the 2008 documentary of the same name directed by Greg Kohs, but even if you were unaware of that, the unbelievable events of the Lightning and Thunder story are just too outrageous to be fiction, and Brewer maintains close fealty to the truth.
His film takes a different tack than the documentary, which gets mired in the medical lows and economic woes of Lighting and Thunder. As both writer and director, Brewer is more interested in the emotional highs, especially the ones found in the music that Mike and Claire make together, which is an outpouring and expression of their love of Neil Diamond, their love of performance, and first and foremost, their love for each other.
When Mike and Claire connect at a musical impersonators show at the Wisconsin State Fair (she’s doing a damn fine Patsy Cline, he’s refusing to do Don Ho) and decide to work on a Neil Diamond act together, Claire makes an important distinction — what they’re striving for is not an impersonation, it’s an interpretation. And “Song Sung Blue” takes that same tack when it comes to this duo. It’s an interpretation of their story, a loving tribute that focuses on what mattered the most to them: family and music.
Brewer, who also directed the Oscar-winning rap drama “Hustle & Flow,” and “Dolemite Is My Name,” has an interest in underdog artists and their creative process, and that’s seen best in the musical sequences of “Song Sung Blue,” where the connection between Lightning and Thunder crackles with electricity and takes flight. When the camera floats between and around them, the audience is allowed in on the jam session.
The film’s earnestness is why it works, a celebration of trying hard and doing what you love, even if other people don’t think it’s cool. Lightning and Thunder’s enthusiasm is so infectious it takes Milwaukee by storm, even catching unlikely folks like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam in its energetic wake, as he joins them for a version of “Forever in Blue Jeans” when they open for the band.
A running gag throughout “Song Sung Blue” illustrates the tightrope that Brewer walks, tonally. Lightning continually insists on opening the show with the Diamond deep cut “Soolaimon,” and it’s a funny recurring bit, but even that pays off into a moving climax where he gets the full choir he’s always dreamed of for the song. We laugh, and then we cry at “Song Sung Blue,” because it’s inspiring to watch people doing the thing they love, random acts from the universe be damned.
