FILM REVIEW: "Song Sung Blue" Can't Hold A Tune
Simone, Springsteen, Winehouse and Mercury - What do these names have in common? Their stories were drawn, quartered, and pummelled into inoffensive, artless shape, for the consumption of moviegoers who are given little else to sustain themselves but the warm, tight grip of familiarity. What happens when this approach is taken for a cover band from the eighties whose fame barely reached outside of America’s Midwest? You get Song Sung Blue.
Based on the 2008 documentary of the same name, Song Sung Blue jaunts through the story of Milwaukee couple and Neil Diamond cover band, ‘Lightning and Thunder’. The film begins with double denim swathed Mike (Hugh Jackman) serenading his AA meeting in celebration of his twentieth ‘sober birthday’, to which the members stare with a blank look of tolerance and a ‘double-vodka-please-anything-to-make-this-bearable’ glint in their eyes; a harbinger of the viewing experience to come.
Mike, hired by Buddy Holly impersonator Mark (Michael Imperioli) to fill in for a Don Ho act at a variety concert, dumps his Luau necklace to defend his artistic integrity as Lightning - an act of his own invention who sings classic rock and roll hits. He is bolstered by beautiful stranger Claire (Kate Hudson), a Patsy Cline impersonator. The two immediately become smitten, and she inspires him to start a Neil Diamond act, which becomes a duo starring the two - ‘Lightning and Thunder’. Band rehearsal scenes are shot like Dog Day Afternoon, if Sonny decided the most pragmatic way to secure funds for his girlfriend’s operation was to enter a battle of the bands contest instead of robbing a bank.
Mike and Claire get married, forming a family with their adolescent children from previous marriages. Puppydog eyed Rachel (Ella Anderson) is fitted with eyelash extensions that would weigh down even the lids of King Kong, and a caking of makeup so unmistakably modern that it tugs you out of the retro clamshell pool you’ve been sentenced to wade in for two hours, King Princess is convincing as stoner teen Angelina, delivering her lines with appropriate flatness and restraint, a life raft in the melodramatic sea of schmaltz. The youngest of the children is Dana, played by Hudson Henley, who raises Anderson and Princess twenty with a rambunctious performance; his tiny body weeps and vibrates with the tenacity of a Fisher-Price Brando.
For the first act, the film assumes the synthetic lardy tone of today’s retiree fodder (80 for Brady, Book Club), and dramatically shifts to The Iron Claw territory after a gory accident disrupts the family. This tonal disparity gives the audience the sensation of being on a hayride driven by Princess Diana’s chauffeur. Jackman and Hudson’s performances are strong and emotionally effective in the film’s more maudlin moments, and when they sing you can tell they’re having the time of their lives, leaving you with the consolation that at least two people enjoyed themselves. Michael Imperioli on the other hand, whose function is to deliver the most trite line imaginable every fifteen minutes - no head-bang or showy guitar strum could mask how little his heart is in it.
At 132 minutes, the film is bloated, and its pacing tedious and uneven. Characters open up about their personal tragedies within minutes of meeting, and, if writer/director Craig Brewer (Black Snake Moan, 2011’s Footloose) can manage to exercise self restraint, become bosom buddies in a montage directly after, if not by the end of the scene. The feel-good aspects of the film are ham-fisted and sped through, and its tragic patches excruciatingly lingered on. Brewer seemingly couldn’t wait for the audience to start feeling bad, and decided to reward his clunky efforts with a nice, long, depressing soak. The viewing experience would be somewhat leavened if you enjoy Neil Diamond (or are one of a handful of Australians familiar with Lightning and Thunder), but those with only a passing familiarity would be better off watching The Sound of Music.
