SONG SUNG BLUE Review: Loving Impersonation Misses the Real Thing

Lightning and Thunder are two worn-down impersonators, bound together by a relationship that burns as hot as their act and by a near-religious devotion to Neil Diamond's music. It's a setup that seems poised to support a modest but resonant portrait of American longing.

But Song Sung Blue repeatedly sidesteps the focus needed to give the film emotional weight; instead, the stretches between songs land with a dull thud. Named for Diamond's aching ballad, the film follows Mike and Claire Sardina, known onstage as the aforementioned Lightning and Thunder and played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, respectively. The 2025 feature, based on Greg Kohs's 2008 documentary, follows a real-life Milwaukee couple whose shared commitment to performance became a lifeline.

Mike and Claire meet at the state fair, where a cast of semi-amateur impersonators don Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and James Brown facades. Claire takes the stage as Patsy Cline, delivering a rendition of "Walkin' After Midnight."

Mike, disheartened by his Don Ho act, quits abruptly. Both performers adrift in middle America, he and Claire find momentum in one another. One of the film's few genuinely romantic moments arrives after their first date, when they sing together--an admittedly familiar beat, but one the film wisely doesn't linger on. Out of their shared frustration and shared devotion, the Neil Diamond tribute band is born.

The film hurtles through the highs and lows of the couple's quest: the merging of their families, bringing together Claire's son and daughter with Mike's daughter; a humiliating failed performance for a biker gang in a bar; and a crowd-pleasing opening set for Pearl Jam, where they sing "Forever in Blue Jeans" with Eddie Vedder. But these beats register less as lived experience than as checkmarks, the gestures of human emotion rather than the thing itself.

This struggle becomes especially clear when real tragedy strikes. A freak accident, where a driver loses control and smashes into Claire in their front yard, shatters their dream. This sequence, however, is delivered with soap opera melodrama. In the hospital, doctors rush to save Claire's life, but when her daughter arrives, Mike pulls her aside and, instead of consolation, forces her to resuscitate him when his heart gives out.

That said, Hudson nearly saves the film with her performance. Following the crash, Claire spirals into an unconsolable depression, left with debilitating leg injuries that stop her from performing. Hudson channels the real, resonant despair felt by anyone whose dreams, regardless of size, are ripped from them.

What edges Song Sung Blue close to glory is how it grapples with middle-class malaise. Mike ignores his heart problem because he doesn't have health insurance. Claire's daughter bristles at the fact that some people get new things, and their family never does. Their headstrong dream symbolizes how the American middle class must rely on faith alone to persevere (and survive) in a cruel world. The only joy lies in clutching their dream close.

Yet, the film dilutes whatever emotional precision Hudson (and even Jackman) delivered. Any coherent emotional throughline is smothered by Craig Brewer's compulsion to pack everything in. Every problem is introduced, briefly acknowledged, and then abandoned without much grace. This is perhaps more possible in a documentary, but it makes for a very confused film.

The effect is only compounded by the overbearing song selection, which stuffs numbers in like sardines, ricocheting from Diamond hit to deep-cut obscurity in ways that constantly pull you out of the film (with few exceptions). Some scenes felt ripe for emotional resonance, such as one in which Mike sings "I Am... I Said" with a Vietnamese store owner who hires him to host karaoke while Claire heals. But these are buried in the mess.

Song Sung Blue is one of the many times a documentary is converted into a flashy film, a needless shift that misses the point entirely. Instead of an empathetic glimpse into one niche of Americana, Hollywood mutates a real-life phenomenon into a disheartening impersonation.

The film opens Thursday, December 25, only in movie theaters, via Focus Features. Visit the official site for locations, showtimes, and ticket information.