REVIEW: Song Sung Blue

I came into Craig Brewer's Song Sung Blue with little context for the real-life couple at the center of this movie, for Neil Diamond, or for the world of celebrity ~~impersonators~~ interpreters. There are no doubt subterranean connotations to the specific songs that they chose to sing at certain moments in the narrative that are lost on me. I have no doubt, though, that the intended audience will find this movie before long. But the film was still viable enough that even a relative neophyte like me could still find himself humming along to this musical drama.

The film documents the real-life couple of Mike and Claire Sardina, celebrity impersonators who fall in love, marry, and form a tribute band for legendary singer, Neil Diamond. We track their relationship from its beginning through their career aspirations and the crossroads in their marriage, including a violent accident that changes their family forever.

Again, I don't have more than a casual interest in Neil Diamond. My investment was more in getting to hear a certain Hugh Jackman sing onscreen again. And my penny was well returned. Jackman and Hudson blend really well together when they're behind the piano or under the spotlight, and that synchronicity carries well during the phases of their relationship that see them in the hotel parking lot or the hospital waiting room as well.

A lot of the ingredients are very familiar to the subgenre of music films--the artist who insists on playing to an invisible market or who retreats into music to escape his battle with addiction. Based on a lot of established patterns from something like Tender Mercies, I went into this assuming that this partnership would mostly track Claire buoying up Mike through his road-bumps. That seemed to be what the film was foreshadowing with opening the film at Mike's AA meeting. In execution, though, it winds up leaning more the other way. This was my biggest surprise with the film, and I found it a rather welcome variation. The current can sometimes run the other way, after all.

A less graceful surprise was how the characters move in and out of phases without articulating most of these feelings through dialogue--without showing their work, as it were. I thought, for example, that Mike and Claire rushed into romance and marriage almost incidentally, but that's the kind of whirlwind romancery that often shows up in this situation.

Even so, that's not the only territory where this kind of slip n' slide narrative movement occurs. Even understanding how devastating a life-changing accident can be and how that sort of thing can unearth really ugly feelings, I was taken off guard just how quickly they got to "My mom was right about you!" The film isn't so interested in exploring these experiences so much as using them to slingshot to the next family crisis.

But there are also things that fall into place without the aid of explicit commentary. The narrative of Mike and Claire's marriage and partnership is supplemented by Mike and Claire's families coming together, boosted by the younger performers, Ella Anderson, Hudson Hensley, and King Princess. There's no specific moment of consummation where you understand that Claire's kids have accepted Mike as their new stepdad. But you also aren't asking for receipts by the end.

Music, does after all, fill in certain blanks that can't be completed with words. Parts of the film try to coast off this, but I suppose that willingness to surrender to the music, even when it doesn't make sense, is what makes this kind of story work in the first place, so what do I know?

--The Professor

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