“Every garden grows one” (Random thoughts on SONG SUNG BLUE)

We watched  Song Sung Blue last night. I honestly didn’t know much about it at all. When I first saw ads for it last year, I truly thought it was a biopic about Neil Diamond, with Hugh Jackman in the starring role. Later I learned it was not about Mr. Diamond at all but about a Neil Diamond tribute band, so I figured it was a rom-com with Mr. Diamond’s music forming the main “hook”. Even though there is a lot of humor in the film, it’s not a rom-com. It’s a somewhat fictionalized (though as far as I’ve read, relatively accurate) biopic of a real-life Neil Diamond tribute band called Lightning and Thunder.

In the late 80s, a guy named Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) is a barely-scraping-by blue-collar dude who has dreams of being a rock singer, but is relegated to the “Impersonator” circuit to play county fairs and bingo halls and that sort of thing. In the opening scene he has an argument with a friend, a guy whose schtick is impersonating Buddy Holly (even though his hair is full gray and he makes no effort to color it), because he wants to do his own music as an act he calls “Lightning”, instead of doing his Don Ho act that he had agreed on. Before storming out he meets Claire Stengl (Kate Hudson), who is about to take the stage as Patsy Cline. Long story short, these two meet again and form a Neil Diamond tribute duo, called “Lightning and Thunder” (“Wait…I’m ‘Thunder’?” Claire asks before planting a long, hard kiss on Mike), and off we are into the lives of these talented people in a world that doesn’t really reward talent all that much, who are constantly behind on the mortgage, and whose health isn’t the greatest (boy, isn’t it).

Here are some random thoughts about the movie:

::  I think that your enjoyment of Song Sung Blue almost certainly hinges on your degree of appreciation for the songs of Neil Diamond. I love me some Neil Diamond, so I loved the movie. If you’re one who runs for the hills at the opening chords of “Sweet Caroline”, this isn’t for you.

::  That said, I love how this movie keeps having Mike fight against doing “Sweet Caroline” all the time. He keeps insisting, and rightly so, that there’s so much more to Neil Diamond than “Sweet Caroline”.

::  But yes, you get a full-on rendition of “Sweet Caroline” in this movie. I’ll say this: the movie earns it.

::  The Buddy Holly guy looked familiar to me. I kept thinking “Wow, he looks like an older version of Christopher from The Sopranos.” That’s because it is Christopher from The Sopranos. I keep forgetting that show is more than 20 years in the rear-view-mirror now. Michael Imperioli is a really good actor, by the way.

::  No spoilers, but if you want a movie about good people struggling through some real shit, this is the movie for you. Doubly so if you want a movie that shows how we’re all just one awful moment away from disaster.

::  Mike is an alcoholic and has been going to AA for years; as the movie opens he’s celebrating twenty years of being sober. I really really really like how the movie never does the supremely obvious thing of having him fall off the wagon. There are a couple of conversations of the “You haven’t been to a meeting in a long time” variety, but they’re more of the “You need support right now” thing than him spiraling back into addiction. At one point he’s working in his garage and he finds, buried in the bottom drawer of a tool chest, a bottle he’d stashed away at some point, because alcoholics stash away bottles. I thought, “Crap, he’s gonna drink now, isn’t he?” He didn’t. The next scene has him pouring it down the drain.

::  When Mike and Claire meet and come together, they each have kids from previous relationships. The movie avoids the usual “Our kids hate each other” stuff, which is nice.

::  The level of “meta” in a movie like this is impressive: Hugh Jackman is playing a guy who played at being Neil Diamond. Jackman does a pretty amazing job of doing what the best “tribute acts” do of sounding enough like the original thing to feel like it, without ever trying to sell anyone on the idea that he is the original thing. There’s a fine line between good and honorable tribute acts and impersonator kitsch, after all.

::  Hugh Jackman is incredibly good in this movie.

::  Kate Hudson is also incredibly good in this movie. It’s interesting to me that my two favorite Kate Hudson movies are music centric: this one, and Almost Famous.

::  In one scene, Kate Hudson is wearing overalls! But…be warned, when you get to that point in the movie, things are about to take a very serious turn.

::  Movies like this have a fine line to walk, in terms of how they look. They need to make the time period convincing without looking like they’re making fun of it, especially when the people populating this world pretty much stopped advancing in terms of fashion sometime at least a decade before this movie even starts. Song Sung Blue never once looks fake or false or like an artifice. I never once felt like I was looking at a set.

::  I don’t want to spoil one of the movie’s best jokes, but I have to admire it because it’s exactly the kind of quasi-morbid humor inside-joke that every family has, based solely on that family’s lore. It’s really a “You had to be there” kind of thing. But it works so, so well, and it really made me happy that the movie went there.

::  To reiterate, if and when you watch Song Sung Blue, have at the ready whatever your particular tear-management device of choice happens to be. Kleenex? Handkerchief? Paper towels? You’ll need it, and you’ll need it several times throughout the movie.

::  The movie sounds great, too. It just does. You’ll be humming nothing but Neil Diamond songs to yourself afterwards. I assume this phase will last for days.

::  I’m glad the movie resisted the…opportunity, maybe?…to have a special appearance by Neil Diamond himself. Maybe that wouldn’t have been feasible at Mr. Diamond’s age, but lesser movies would make that exact kind of indulgence. Song Sung Blue is an immersive film; an actual appearance by Mr. Diamond would have broken the illusion.

::  To recap: Song Sung Blue is really good and I’m glad they made it.

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