‘Song Song Blue’ Is a Sweet Surprise

Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman in a performance moment from Song Sung Blue. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Film.

This past Christmas, Hugh Jackman came to Milwaukee to serve Kopp’s custard, mainly to promote Song Sung Blue. The film is about a Milwaukee wife-and-husband team, Thunder and Lightning, that stirred crowds with a Neil Diamond tribute act. No one expected anyone in the nation outside Milwaukee to be talking about the film during awards season.

The fictionalized film emerged from a documentary about Mike and Claire Sardina, minor local icons as Thunder and Lightning. It makes for a good screenplay: their love affair and singing act, how she became depressed after losing her lower left leg when a car struck her while she was gardening around their home, how they revived their act and how he later dies from a heart attack.

No one expected on its December. 25 release that by January the film would be in discussion for 2025 awards. Yet now it is, even as a long shot. It’s making money around the nation. Trade papers say it has already recouped its $30 million investment thanks to word of mouth.

Stars Jackman and particularly Kate Hudson as Claire are in the talk for the Oscars and other awards. This may just be an early nod to interest by older moviegoers since this film centers on a popular subgenre — celebrity impersonator tributes to pop music greats. It is buoyed by the songs of Neil Diamond, Patsy Cline, James Brown, Buddy Holly and other finger-snapping greats.

It certainly gives new respect to the impersonation circuit, which also encompasses the Beatles, Linda Ronstadt and Whitney Houston, not to mention the subset subgenre of female impersonators. The whole reverence felt for these acts and the money spent on celebrity nostalgia tend to make critics look down their noses at the enterprise.

But let’s be truthful. Many of the participants sure can sing and play instruments, so they are often spreading joy and adoration in their own way. And they help keep pop music history alive for generations.

Never forget that those who didn’t become famous introducing the songs can sure sing them! In fact, that is Jackman and Hudson doing their own vocals, though the backup voices provide a lot of technical help.

So this subgenre was due for a movie tribute. One that people didn’t jeer as the land of the unrich and unfamous. And it would be hard to find a more romantic and saddening story than Thunder and Lightning.

Writer-director Craig Brewer has farmed this celebrity field before, and while the movie has no great cinematic turns to write home about, it is sturdy and knows how to treat its cast, including Michael Imperioli as a Buddy Holly impersonator and Ella Anderson as Claire’s troubled but outspoken daughter.

But the best parts of the film – mainly the early courting and developing family atmosphere – belong to Jackman and Hudson. He has always been a chameleon performer, having great credits in film and on Broadway. Here his acting combines a winning conversational tone directly to the camera – on video or at AA meetings – with dramatic intensity when the character suffers from and recovers from heart attacks.

Hudson, now in her forties and past the time when she was Goldie Hawn’s impish daughter in a lot of trivial movie and TV roles, has grown into an actress worth watching. Her charm and camera-savvy immediacy have also gained believability in demonstrative scenes of despair and neuroses after she loses her leg. Her recovery is also well acted, while I thought his heart condition was overly magnified.

Hudson shouldn’t displace Jessie Buckley of Hamnet at best actress, but she may well be in the mix in a year light on enduring movie romance.

Song Sung Blue is currently playing at a number of area movie theaters and is expected to be on streaming platforms within weeks.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets, an unusual family history and memoir, go to domnoth.substack.com.