Song Sung Blue review: A big-hearted, blue-collar love story – with a shocking fork in the road

The highs and lows of a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute act were eventful enough to warrant an award-winning documentary, so it’s perhaps surprising to have taken a further decade-and-a-half for someone to turn their tale into a drama.

For while both share a familiar, million-selling Diamond favourite as their title, and barely 10 minutes ever pass before another banger graces the soundtrack of writer-director Craig Brewer’s film, the music is largely a backdrop to a beautiful, big-hearted, blue-collar love story – with a shocking fork in the road along the way.

Hugh Jackman is Mike Sardina, a Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic celebrating 20 years sober when he meets a fellow traveller on Milwaukee’s low-rent “Legends” circuit of fairgrounds and old folks’ community centre casinos; Kate Hudson’s Claire, a lively, divorced mother of two struggling to pay the bills.

She supplements her meagre hairdresser income by belting out the hits of country star Patsy Cline, while he’s more a jack(man) of all trades calling himself Lightning (“Chuck Berry, Barry Manilow and The Beatles rolled into one”) but, despite often being told he looks like Neil Diamond, he’s reluctant to take on the songs and persona of a man he regards as a hero.

Claire persuades him otherwise (“you’re not an impersonator, you’re an interpreter”), after a first-date jam session where she joins in on keyboards and vocals; Mike dreams up a stage name for his new partner in rhyme, and hey presto: Lightning & Thunder are born.

Romance blossoms (fast), the couple marry and settle into a life of domestic bliss with Claire’s kids and occasional visits by Mike’s daughter from his first marriage, because this is not a film about fame-hungry musicians reaching for the stars.

Their ambitions are modest, with music as joyful icing on the cake of lower-middle-class contentment, but they nonetheless attain minor celebrity status via local TV coverage, which in turn leads to rubbing shoulders with superstars when they’re invited to open for grunge giants Pearl Jam.

Everything in the garden is rosy, until a freak accident lands Claire in hospital, mothballing the singing act and leaving them drowning in huge medical bills, their future uncertain.

It’s a shift in dramatic tone requiring Brewer to walk a tightrope he comes close to falling off, but luckily the director has two actors fully in control of every aspect of their characters to keep him on balance.

Jackman establishes Mike’s good guy credentials early, the kind of man everyone likes and will do anything for (including Michael Imperioli’s aging Buddy Holly impersonator and Jim Belushi’s wonderfully comic, weepy gig promoter), facing his family’s upheavals with a pragmatism learned from past challenges as, first, a soldier and then an alcoholic.

Read more:

• Marty Supreme review: Timothée Chalamet hits new heights in breathless and brilliant ping pong drama
• The Housemaid review: Amanda Seyfried shines in a satisfyingly scary chiller that doesn't take itself too seriously

His charisma glows on the screen in every frame, and Hudson leaves an even deeper impression in her portrayal of a woman whose world is turned upside down, spiralling into depression and a slave to her medication; it’s hard to name a film in which she’s better.

It goes without saying that the screenplay, unavoidably melodramatic in places yet never mawkish, is designed for audiences to root for the couple, but Jackman and Hudson are so on their game, so engaged in making Mike and Claire believable that only stone-hearted cynics won’t end up loving them.

Also deserving of a shout-out are King Princess and Ella Anderson as, respectively, Mike’s and Claire’s world-wise teenage daughters, and Hudson Hensley as Claire’s younger son, giving the Sardina homestead a three-dimensional, credible family dynamic rarely seen on screen since Roseanne Barr’s ordinary people sitcom of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

And then there’s the songs – more than a dozen of them in one shape or another, performed with gusto by actors with superb voices who have an unshakable handle on their uplifting qualities, exchanging looks that bring every line of every lyric to life.

“Good times never seemed so good,” Neil Diamond sang on the evergreen Sweet Caroline, and this is a film where even the bad ones can be overcome on the path to something brighter.

Song Sung Blue is released in UK cinemas on New Year's Day.

Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.