{"id":254293,"date":"2025-10-27T09:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T09:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/254293\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T09:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T09:20:08","slug":"hugh-jackman-leads-neil-diamond-tribute-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/254293\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugh Jackman Leads Neil Diamond Tribute Band"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tI\u2019ve never been wild about the term \u201cfaith-based movie\u201d \u2014 or, at least, the idea that it should only be applied to PG-rated calamity-meets-redemption Sunday-school soap operas micro-targeted to Evangelicals. \u201cSong Sung Blue<\/a>,\u201d in almost every way, is a faith-based movie, though this one is rooted in the holly holy dream of devotion to the church of Neil Diamond. It\u2019s based on the true story of Mike and Claire Sarina (played by Hugh Jackman<\/a> and Kate Hudson<\/a>), who in the late \u201980s and \u201990s formed a Neil Diamond tribute band, performing as Lightning & Thunder (he\u2019s Lightning, she\u2019s Thunder). At first, the movie may strike you as a parable of more kitsch than faith.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two meet at a performance at a scuzzy casino in their hometown of Milwaukee, where assorted semi-amateurs get up to impersonate dead legends like Elvis and Buddy Holly. She\u2019s dressed as Patsy Cline and does a pretty good rendition of \u201cAfter Midnight.\u201d He\u2019s supposed to go on as Don Ho and sing the 1966 novelty hit \u201cTiny Bubbles,\u201d but he\u2019s so tired of singing it that he quits on the spot. As we learn pretty quickly, Mike and Claire are both broken-down middle-aged Middle Americans toting around a private load of sorrow.<\/p>\n

\n\tEach is divorced with kids. He\u2019s a Vietnam veteran and 20-years-sober alcoholic who works odd jobs as a mechanic and plays in just about any band that will have him. She\u2019s a hairdresser and struggling single mother who isn\u2019t so much thriving as surviving. Together, they hatch an idea: What it they formed a band and sang Neil Diamond songs, not just doing the same old wax-museum versions of old rock stars but tapping into what the people really want?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSong Sung Blue\u201d was written and directed by Craig Brewer<\/a>, who has made one amazing movie (\u201cHustle & Flow\u201d), one good one (\u201cDolemite Is My Name\u201d), and a few middling ones (\u201cFootloose,\u201d \u201cComing 2 America\u201d), and the first thing you notice about the film, which Brewer based on a 2009 documentary of the same title, is how unironically it celebrates Karaoke Culture. By that, I don\u2019t just mean what transpires in karaoke bars (though the movie has a number of scenes set in them). I\u2019m talking about the impulse that started in karaoke and carried over to \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d and to something larger: the whole religious dream about pop music that someone who was a nobody could stand up and sing a song made famous by a somebody, and if they did it with enough skill and passion they could channel what was great about that star in a way that turned the very act of channeling into its own sublime expression. Brewer navigates this terrain like a jukebox Jonathan Demme.<\/p>\n

\n\tMike worships Neil Diamond, to the point that when he sings, he\u2019s no mere impersonator \u2014 he\u2019s closer to a Neil Diamond avatar, coaxing out and dramatizing Diamond\u2019s essence. Hugh Jackman is, of course, a marvelous singer in his own right, and while the film makes the point that Mike isn\u2019t trying to sound exactly like his idol, in \u201cSong Sung Blue\u201d Jackman\u2019s musical performances are transcendent in their ability to signify what we love about Neil Diamond: the low command of his voice, the smooth articulation, the crackling rosiness of it all.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe might look at Mike, in his overcoat of blue glitter, with his long hair cut and styled into a neatly parted Diamond pageboy, and Claire, in her spangled red dress with the gold piping, providing her cascading harmonies, and assume, for a moment, that the movie wants us to see them as some played-straight version of the Culps on \u201cSNL.\u201d But there\u2019s nothing jokey or tacky about their presence, and the actors\u2019 performances do nothing so much as bring the love.<\/p>\n

\n\tJackman, with his scuffed fortitude, and Hudson, radiating a stubborn wholesomeness, have an easy-listening camaraderie, to the point that when Mike and Claire fall in love and get married, it feels both casual and inevitable. With a booker (Jim Belushi) who has casino connections all over the Midwest, they start to work the circuit and develop a following. Their ascent becomes complete when they\u2019re in their living room and Mike gets a call from Eddie Vedder, who he\u2019s never heard of (he wonders if Pearl Jam is a fruit preserve). It\u2019s the early \u201990s, and grunge hipsters have embraced the pop legends of their youth. When Lightning & Thunder end up opening for Pearl Jam in Milwaukee, and Eddie comes out onstage to sing along with them, they\u2019ve basically just gone to karaoke heaven.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe adversity comes out of nowhere.\u00a0Literally, as in a bad dream. Claire is standing on her front lawn, and suddenly\u2026a life upended, a body and soul severed, a reality redefined. This is where \u201cSong Sung Blue\u201d flirts, and not so lightly, with becoming that other kind of faith-based movie. I raise the issue because I actually think it has demographic meaning; this is the rare film that feels like it could exert a blue-state-meets-red-state appeal. Or, given how over a certain age Neil Diamond\u2019s nostalgic fan base is, the whole thing could wind up slipping between the cracks. After the calamity occurs, the movie, for a while, loses its pace. Yet Hudson\u2019s anguished performance holds it together. This is let-it-rip acting with the fussiness burned off. And Hudson and Jackman don\u2019t just have chemistry; they have an emotional synergy that grows more moving as Mike and Claire bond together \u2014 and fuse, once again, with the power of Neil \u2014 to heal themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\tMike has physical problems of his own (he keeps having what look like mini-heart attacks, which he ignores since he\u2019s too poor to have health insurance), and on the day of their big reunion show, which is supposed to end with them meeting Neil Diamond at an ice-cream stand, Mike tries to heal a gaping head wound with nail glue. You know he\u2019s in for a hot August night.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the movie recognizes, there are two kinds of Neil Diamond fans: those who, like Mike, hear the beautiful depths in dozens of his songs (\u201cCherry, Cherry,\u201d \u201cBrother Love\u2019s Travelling Salvation Show,\u201d \u201cCracklin\u2019 Rosie\u201d), and the bom bom bom people \u2014 the ones Mike can\u2019t stand, who at a Neil Diamond concert experience an epiphany when they pump their fists in the air and sing-shout \u201cbom! bom! bom!\u201d in the middle of the chorus of \u201cSweet Caroline,\u201d even though it\u2019s not even a lyric. They\u2019re singing along with the trumpet. These are the people who have to enhance the line \u201cGood times never seemed so good!\u201d (\u201cSo good! So good! So good!\u201d) until it becomes an existential declaration of the miracle of life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSong Sung Blue\u201d is certainly a movie for the bom bom bom crowd. Mostly, though, it\u2019s for the Neil Diamond fans who will listen to Mike and Claire, in their solo show at the Ritz Theater in Milwaukee, in a state of slow-burn bliss. When Mike starts to sing the Arabic chant of \u201cSoolaimon,\u201d Diamond\u2019s single from 1970, it sounds eerie and mysterious, but when the groove kicks in it\u2019s so ecstatic you want to revel in its majesty, the same way Mike does: as a Diamond shining through the darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve never been wild about the term \u201cfaith-based movie\u201d \u2014 or, at least, the idea that it should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[138133,88,29335,25488,206,91216],"class_list":{"0":"post-254293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-craig-brewer","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hugh-jackman","11":"tag-kate-hudson","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-song-sung-blue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}